There is no question that the control exercised by the Central Pacific management over the legal and miscellaneous expenses of the company was informal to the last degree. Huntington had a great deal of money to spend and he turned it over to trusted agents without too many questions. He would pay $5,000 or $10,000 at a time to General Franchot, for instance, without inquiring where it went or how it was paid.[322] Checks were made out in all cases to I. E. Gates, Mr. Huntington’s assistant in New York, and were indorsed by him either to payee or in blank.[323] Vouchers covering such items were made out simply to “Expense,” or to “Legal expense.”[324] In many cases expenditures authorized by Stanford, Crocker, or Huntington were represented by no vouchers at all,[325] the filing of vouchers being subsequently waived at stockholders’ meetings.
All in all, the general and legal expenses of the Central Pacific between the years 1875 and 1885 averaged over $500,000 annually. The only reply to the government inquiry as to what this money had been paid out for was Stanford’s statement already quoted that vouchers to which there were objections would not be included in any settlement with the United States, but that the moneys would be treated as still in the treasury.[326] This was plainly an evasion of the point at issue.
Company in Politics
Still another question is how far the headquarters of the Central Pacific in the various capitals were used as agencies for the election of legislators and other persons who owed their position to railroad influence. It is the unhesitating popular judgment that the railroad at an early date “entered politics.” In a long letter dated August 26, 1873, Eugene Casserly asserted that the Central Pacific aimed to be and was a third party in the politics of the state, holding the balance of power between the Democratic and the Republican parties, and controlling or seeking to control at will each or both of them. “This third party,” continued Mr. Casserly, “has the usual attributes of a political party, the same apparatus and appliances. It has its leaders, its managers, its editors, its orators, its adherents. It selects these from both parties, but mostly from the party in the majority. Whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats, and however they divide or contend on party issues, they move as one man in the cause of the railroad against the people. To that cause they give their first allegiance.”
Bassett Polemic
This statement of Mr. Casserly calls to mind another charge or series of charges made by a man named J. M. Bassett in the years following 1892. Mr. Bassett was one of the early pioneers. He came to California in 1851, and was at various times miner, printer, newspaper man, railroad employee, and member of the Oakland city council. At one time he was Leland Stanford’s secretary. After Mr. Stanford had been forced out of the presidency of the Southern Pacific, Bassett began to publish a series of open letters to Collis P. Huntington, and continued them weekly, with occasional intervals, for several years. The sustained vivacity and pungency of this polemic, and the systematic virulence with which Bassett reviewed and criticized the Huntington policies make the series a noteworthy journalistic achievement. Mr. Bassett denounced Mr. Huntington for the overcapitalization of the Southern Pacific system, for its failure to pay taxes, for its carelessness of the lives of its employees and of the public, for its attempt to evade repayment of the debt which it owed to the United States government, and for the general mismanagement which, he asserted, had taken place under Huntington’s control. With respect to the interference of the Southern Pacific in politics, Bassett wrote to Huntington in 1895:
What chief executive of the State, before the present incumbent, has there been who did not owe his nomination and election to the Southern Pacific Company and in acknowledgment of his debt hasten to obey its slightest command? Has there ever been a Board of Railroad Commissioners before last November in which you did not own at least two members? Have you not named every Harbor Commissioner appointed during the past twelve years?
Have you not hitherto chosen San Francisco’s Police Commissions and do you not now exercise a dictatorial power over the city’s police, especially the Harbor Police? Were not the Judges of the two United States Courts in San Francisco appointed at the instance of Leland Stanford? How many Superior Courts are there in the State in which a citizen may bring an action against you in full confidence that he will be fairly and impartially dealt with? Doubtless there are such but the difficulty is to find them. Before the recent elections how long did you control the government of San Francisco? Have you not dictated the government of Oakland for the past twenty-five years? Until last election had you not continuous control of Alameda County’s government?...[327]
When one desires to test the accuracy of accusations like those of Casserly and of Bassett, one has first to remember that they are in accord with the substantially uncontradicted declarations of men of all degrees of prominence in California over a period of fifty years. Political campaigns have been waged on the question of the railroad versus the people. Not only newspapers like the Sacramento Union and the San Francisco Examiner, but men like John T. Doyle, at one time state railroad commissioner, General Howard, a leading member of the Constitutional Convention of 1879, and H. H. Haight, at one time governor of the state of California, have asserted that railroad influence was a real and important factor in the politics of California. While neither a corporation nor an individual can properly be convicted on the strength of current report, the presence of so much smoke, over so long a period, is fair evidence of some fire.
Documentary Evidence