Dealings of this kind were improper, to say the least, and calculated to interfere with the impartial discharge of a commissioner’s duties. On the whole subject a committee of the California legislature reported as follows:
As to the second subject of inquiry, whether the Commissioners, or either of them, during their term of office, may have made any extraordinary acquisition of property ... your committee report that in their opinion Commissioner Stoneman did not make any extraordinary acquisition of property; that Commissioner Cone made a large acquisition to his wealth, which was already great when he was elected Railroad Commissioner, and your committee believe that such acquisition of wealth was largely due to extraordinary and unusual facilities afforded by the railroad officers; and that Commissioner Cone, in the purchase of thirty-four thousand acres of land for twenty-nine thousand dollars, was made a privileged purchaser, and received from the railroad company facilities in this regard denied to other applicants for portions of the tract; and further, that the transaction by which the Gerke farm was purchased by Commissioner Cone in April, 1881, and sold in September of the same year to Nicholas Smith, the Treasurer of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, at a profit of one hundred thousand dollars, gives rise to the suspicion that more was contemplated in the purchase and sale than appears on the face of the transaction. As to Commissioner Beerstecher, your committee find that by general report, and in the opinion of his associates, he was without means at the time of his election, and his sudden acquisition of wealth while Commissioner was without adequate explanation....
As to the fourth subject of inquiry, your committee report that Commissioners Cone and Beerstecher knew of and permitted both systematic and casual discrimination in charges and facilities for transportation between persons and places by railroad corporations in this State, and that through their conduct in permitting and upholding the same, Commissioner Stoneman was unable to accomplish a redress of such discriminations while Commissioner. Further, under this fourth subject of inquiry, your committee find that Commissioner Cone sacrificed the best interests of the State through personal friendship for Governor Stanford, and in return therefor received favors from him; and that Commissioner Beerstecher’s conduct admits of no other explanation than that he was bribed, and that in the opinion of this committee Commissioners Cone and Beerstecher acted in the interests of the railroad corporations rather than of the people.
This finding of the legislative committee is justified by the facts elicited in their investigation.
CHAPTER XII
THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC AND POLITICS
Appeals to Public
We may now consider in a more general fashion the political methods of the Southern Pacific group during the first thirty years of their railroad history. We have seen that they not only relied upon the talents of their legal staff in taking advantage of defects in the law, but that in two cases—the case of the railroad commission of 1880, and that of the subsidy in San Francisco in 1863—they probably resorted to the direct use of money to accomplish their ends. Yet a whole state cannot be bought, though individuals may be, and it would do injustice to the breadth of view of the associates to suppose that they limited themselves to any such crude device. Indeed, the frequency with which money bribes were offered probably diminished as time went on.