American river and got under way to build, it was at once seen that its success would substantially destroy the value of the route by railroad to Folsom or as much further as might be built and thence by stage road through Placerville and over the mountains to Virginia City. Immense traffic in passengers and freight followed that line and yielded large profits-the amount paid on freights across the mountains from California in 1863 being said to have been about thirteen millions of dollars, not counting return freights or passenger fares,—a great part of which business would cease as soon as the Central Pacific should approach the summit and afford cheaper and more convenient transportation than the Placerville route to the Nevada mines. With the end in view of securing this traffic, the Central Pacific, as soon as it got well up towards Dutch Flat, made arrangements for a wagon and stage road from that place over the mountains in advance of its rails; so that passengers and freight for Carson valley could reach it at much less cost and with more speed than by the other road, while at the same time the transportation rates, though much less than by the other route, would still be very remunerative. This diversion the Placerville route people were of course interested in preventing; and, as very soon appeared, they were not particularly scrupulous in the means they employed to accomplish their purpose.

One measure they adopted, and so far as it went a perfectly legitimate one, after failing to induce the Central Pacific to buy them out, was to extend their road further towards the summit. In this effort they managed to get as far as Latrobe, some fifteen miles southeast of Folsom; and the road was afterwards extended as far as Shingle Springs and finally, under other auspices, to Placerville. But the chief method they took to injure their rival, which was pushing ahead in spite of them to the summit, was by misrepresentations and abuse. They pretended that the difficulties of crossing the heights above Dutch Flat with a railroad were insuperable; that the Central Pacific managers knew such to be the fact, and that all they contemplated was to get up high enough to reach and connect with their Dutch Flat wagon road and thereby monopolize the valuable transportation business to and from the Nevada mines. On the assumption of

the truth of this assertion and others equally void of truth or support, they termed Judah's grand project the "Dutch Flat swindle" a name which was eagerly caught up and repeated by the inimical newspapers-and in almost every manner possible they tried to belittle Judah, impugn his character and skill, falsify his surveys and reports, and break down the credit of the Central Pacific and its managers. These abusive misrepresentations-to give them no worse name-came out most strongly in the early part of 1865, in connection with investigations as to the question of a subsidy by the legislature of the then new state of Nevada. At the constitutional convention for that state, held in the summer of 1864, Stanford, the president of the Central Pacific, had by invitation made an address. It had been proposed in that convention that the intended state should grant fifty thousand dollars a mile for every mile of road constructed in the state to the first railroad from Pacific tide water that should reach the state line. He urged that the proposition should be changed so as to give to the Central Pacific company whatever was given, either by a direct grant or a guaranty of interest on its bonds, with the object chiefly of enabling it to push on at once over the mountains, or, if that could not be done, that nothing should be done. And he succeeded in accomplishing the last part of his request by having the objectionable clause stricken out. Afterwards, in January, 1865, at the first legislature of the state, besides the adoption of a series of resolutions asking congress to make an appropriation of United States bonds to the amount of ten millions. of dollars to the first complete line of railway across the mountains, a special committee of five was appointed by the senate to collect all information that could be procured in reference to the various proposed railroads and report what action in reference thereto ought to be taken by the legislature. To the calls for information made by this committee, the Central Pacific company answered with a very full statement of its affairs, resources, prospects, work done, work to be done, and estimates of cost; and a few weeks later Lester L. Robinson, representing the rival route, wrote a letter which not only provoked a great deal of adverse comment but, in view of all the facts, very clearly deserved as much as it received.

'Proceedings of Constitutional Convention of Nevada.

Robinson, who claimed to be a civil engineer and to know all about the route of the Central Pacific road above Colfax, pronounced it in effect impracticable; and he said he could not conceive how any set of men could seriously undertake to construct a railroad over such a country. It was not only impossible to build from Colfax to Dutch Flat, but it was worse from Dutch Flat to the summit, and worst of all from the summit to Truckee. He even went so far as to say that Judah, notwithstanding his reports to the contrary, was convinced that the route was a hopeless one; that he was opposed to the location; that the fixing upon it by the company caused him to leave its employ; that when he left for the east the last time it was not in the service of the company, and, finally, that the company had given him one hundred thousand dollars of its first mortgage bonds not to expose his knowledge that the route was a hopeless one and the road could not be built over it. Robinson said further that the route beyond Colfax was not located or, if it were, that the company, on account of its impracticability, dared not make public the particular location on the ground; while on the other hand he was certain that the Placerville route was much more desirable and would subserve the interests of the state of Nevada far better than the Central Pacific, which he represented as attempting to lay everybody under contribution to aid it in building a railroad only far enough into the mountains to divert all the Nevada freight and travel upon their Dutch Flat wagon road. In conclusion he said he felt assured, from his intimate acquaintance with Judah, that no reliance could be placed upon his estimates of cost; that his surveys were not of a character to base any calculations upon, and that his maps of profiles were "projected," or in other words not based upon actual field notes. To this tissue of exaggerations of fact, which were of themselves gross enough to defeat their own objects, Stanford replied, showing its misstatements and defending Judah's memory; and Robinson rejoined. But it seems probable that from the first both sides might as well have saved their pains. The state of Nevada appears to have been in no condition to help any transcontinental railroad and had quite enough on its hands to build local roads connecting its principal places with the great

thoroughfare that soon came forging ahead through the Truckee meadows and Humboldt plains without its assistance.1

While this controversy was going on in Nevada in the early part of 1865, the building of the road from Colfax up towards the summit, which Robinson had in substance pronounced madness, was being vigorously pushed. At the beginning of that year, the prospects of a speedy close of the civil war and several decisions of the courts, sustaining the constitutionality of the subsidy acts and in other respects favorable to the company, placed it in such a position as to justify it in putting forth all its energies. A call was issued for five thousand laborers, and every able-bodied man that would work and could be procured was engaged and given steady employment. Though the number that applied was at first comparatively small, it gradually increased on account of the high wages, the steadiness and reasonableness of the service and the certainty of getting pay when it was earned. In October, 1865, there were five thousand men with six hundred teams of horses-looking like and making as it were a swarming army along the section under way-actually employed in the work of construction. The greater number of the laborers, on account of the unwillingness of white men to leave what they supposed the more profitable or congenial work of mining or farming, were Chinamen, who by that time constituted a very large element in the population of California and were found on trial to be, as Stanford said of them, "quiet, peaceable, industrious and economical-ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work required in railroad building" and quite "as efficient as white laborers." More prudent and saving than whites, they were contented with less wages; there was in fact, notwithstanding representations to the contrary, no system of slavery, serfdom or peonage among them, but each man received his equal proportion of wages monthly in coin according to his labor, and there could be no doubt the company could, within another year, if it wished, procure fifteen thousand more laborers of the same kind and on the same terms. It could thus be enabled, not only to complete the work in the shortest practicable period, but even in

1 Letter of L. L. Robinson, February 3, 1865; Stanford's Reply, February 14, 1865; Robinson's Rejoinder, February 23, 1865.

some degree to meet the public impatience for its completion. And "without them," Stanford further said, "it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great national enterprise within the time required by the acts of congress."1

At the commencement of the work in 1863 and before any of the money from the various subsidies could be made available, reliance had to be had upon money borrowed on promises and personal responsibility. This was raised chiefly by Huntington in the eastern states. Afterwards when the act of 1864 was passed, which doubled the company's lands and in effect doubled its bonds, there was no longer any trouble about finances; and the main question was how to dispose of the vast amounts that were beginning to flow in on every side. At the start, and for the first section of eighteen miles of the road, as has been stated, the work was done by subcontractors, or in other words a contract for the whole section was made with the partnership of C. Crocker & Co. and by that firm subcontracted to other parties. But, as it soon became apparent to the railroad managers that they might as well make the profits of construction as pay them out to others, a new system was adopted and the work was thenceforward done not by outsiders but directly by the firm of C. Crocker & Co., consisting of the railroad magnates; and in this manner the company contracted with its managers or, in other words, its managers in the name of the company contracted with themselves. From that time the profits, which grew larger and larger, flowed into their own coffers, not as railroad directors but as partners of the firm of C. Crocker & Co. The result was that they immediately began to grow wealthy as private individuals; and as good luck in the form of the cessation of the war, the fall of gold and in other respects favored them on every side, the commencement was made of their multi-millionaire fortunes. But whatever they made and however they made it, the work they did was well done and enormous in extent. It was substantially all under the direct superintendence of Charles Crocker, who had rapidly developed from a small dry-goods dealer at Sacramento into a great organizer and manager in the face of the world. He was constantly on the move, rushing 1Stanford's Statements of Progress of the Work, October 10, 1865.