CHAPTER III
FEDERAL LAND GRANTS AND SUBSIDIES
Government Aid Deemed Necessary
Serviceable as local subsidies were, there is no question that the most important aid granted to the Central Pacific Railroad came from Congress.[70] It was perfectly well understood on the Pacific Coast that no transcontinental railroad could be built without the assistance of the national government. This was the attitude of the California legislature in 1852, when it instructed its senators in Congress, and requested its representatives, to vote for an act providing for the construction of a railway from the Missouri or Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, the cost of which should be borne by the general government.[71] It was also the position of the Railroad Convention of 1853, which sat at San Francisco under the presidency of Governor Bigler, and of that better advertised gathering known as the Pacific Railroad Convention of 1859, the resolutions of which concerning routes and state bond issues in aid of railroads gave rise to so much heated discussion.[72]
Judah’s Activities in Washington
Not only was it the attitude of the Pacific Coast that federal aid was necessary, but, still more important, Judah was able to advise his associates that Congress looked with favor upon the plan. He was convinced of this of his own personal knowledge, for he had been in Washington both on his own account and as a delegate of the Convention of 1859, and had reported to his constituents that only the pressure of more important matters arising out of the Civil War prevented favorable action upon the bill which they had sent him east to support. Upon this information, indeed, much of the plans of the Huntington-Stanford group was based.
Late in 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad sent Mr. Judah to Washington to solicit whatever aid the federal government might be disposed to give. We have in Judah’s report upon this visit, dated September 1, 1862, a very full account of his negotiations. Judah sailed for the Atlantic states on October 10, 1861. During the trip he busied himself in talking with Mr. Sargent, Congressional representative from California, who was his fellow passenger, and in writing up the results of the survey which he had made during the summer of 1861. On his arrival in New York he completed this report, caused 1,000 copies of it to be printed, and distributed the copies widely where he thought they would do most good. Late in November, after conference with Senator McDougal, of California, chairman of the Senate Pacific Railroad Committee, he proceeded to Washington.