In a word, if the conclusions of the United States Pacific Railway Commission are to be relied upon, and they were made by engineers relatively soon after the completion of the road, the builders of the Central Pacific were able to accomplish their contracts with the cash and the proceeds of the company’s bonds that were turned over to them, and to retain their Central Pacific stock as a clear profit. If we compare this stock surplus with the probable cash investment in the road, taking the shares at any reasonable valuation, say at $15 or $20 per share, the profit does not seem excessive. If we compare it with the contributions of the associates, however, and this is the more reasonable because the associates received the full benefit of the difference between cost and receipts, it represents, on the most conservative calculation, 500 or 600 per cent for an investment which probably did not exceed $1,000,000, over a period of six years. To this should be added the proceeds of the land grant and of the local subsidies.
The federal government seems in these matters to have assumed the major portion of the risk, and the associates seem to have derived the profits. Nor is this point of view vitiated by the fact that the federal government was ultimately repaid its loan in full, for the reason that the repayment was not at the expense of the associates, but was made possible by a credit arising out of the earnings of the road, and represented merely a shifting of the burden of the debt due the federal authorities to the communities along the line.
Besides the completion of the main line of the Central Pacific, the Contract and Finance Company built a portion of the California and Oregon Railroad, part of the Western Pacific, and the entire San Joaquin Valley branch of the Central Pacific from Lathrop to Goshen. The arrangements between the Contract and Finance Company and Central Pacific for this work varied, but substantial additional profits were secured. In 1874, the Contract and Finance Company was dissolved. There is some dispute as to whether its assets were divided into four or five parts, but both Stanford and Crocker have testified that their dividend consisted of approximately $13,000,000 in Central Pacific stock, at par.[123] At the same time the stockholders of the construction company assumed its debts, amounting to perhaps $1,600,000.[124]
CHAPTER V
THE SEARCH FOR A TERMINAL
Progress of Construction
Under its various construction contracts, the Central Pacific steadily progressed, between 1863 and 1869, from Sacramento to a junction with the Union Pacific near Ogden. The official statement of the progress of construction is as follows:[125]