from the east. As the engines came up, each a ponderous and powerful structure made for scaling mountains and with a whistle that was heard for miles and waked echoes in the furthest mountains, they saluted. It was the salutation, the all-hail of the Orient and the Occident in the middle of the continent. Soon the passengers, pouring from the trains on each side, gathered around the gap; and the last tie was produced. It was from the west and consisted of a beautifully polished stick of Californian laurel, bearing in its center a plate of silver on which were engraved the names of the two companies and their officers. It was soon put in place under the ends of the last rails, which were drawn together and fastened; and the connection was complete with one exception. This was the last spike. It too was soon produced. Like the last tie it also came from the bounteous west. It was of solid Californian gold.

But little time was lost in placing the last spike in position; and it was driven home with a hammer of solid silver in the hands of Stanford, the president of the Central Pacific. Then followed a few addresses, including a prayer, cheers, music and the reading of numerous congratulatory telegrams, which came flashing over the wires from the far east and the far west, as the news of the driving of the last spike spread. Again the engines saluted; the officers and guests of the Union Pacific boarded their cars; and their train passed over the connecting tie, pressed the Central Pacific rails and then retired back upon its own track. The Central Pacific train in the same manner ran over upon the Union Pacific rails and then back to its own track. The union was complete; the east and west had embraced, and the two lines had become one continuous road across the continent in its widest breadth. Before the sun sank, there was banqueting and feasting the best that could be afforded on the trains-and the day ended with more saluting, more cheering and more rejoicing, which were repeated in nearly every city of the eastern states and in every city, town and village of the Golden West.

CHAPTER VII.

BOOTH.

IT

T is perhaps impossible to adequately estimate the importance of the opening of the transcontinental railroad to California. and the Pacific coast. It was the golden chain that bound. them indissolubly with the east and with civilization on both sides of the Atlantic. It had always from the beginning been, and was still, immensely popular with the mass of the people. And it would seem that it ought to have continued, and with judicious management and without loss or any great loss of profit might have continued, popular. But for various reasons, which by degrees became the subjects of much discussion, crimination and recrimination, the antipathy already noticed increased and at length grew into a powerful factor in state politics. If the railroad had only moderately succeeded, and still more if it had proved in any respect a failure, the result would have been different; but its unprecedented and unparalleled success, besides calling out what was regarded as pride and insolence in some of its officers, produced in the commencement a general feeling that the government had been inconsiderate in giving it more than it really needed, and that instead of being, as was intended, a mere agent and trustee for the commonweal, it had become a powerful corporation, practically independent of the government and with no thought except for its own interests.

On the other hand, the railroad claimed that it had complied strictly with its engagements and adhered closely to the terms of the contract which the government had made with it. If that contract had been inconsiderate, it was not the fault of the railroad. If it had received large subsidies, it had incurred great risks that no one else was willing to undertake and had overcome great obstacles that would otherwise have been insuperable. If

it had become wealthy, it was because it had created the wealth by furnishing a highway for the nation and making the desert and the wilderness valuable. If it had borne down opposition and competition, it had done nothing more than was necessary to secure its own success, nothing more than business principles required and nothing more than was customary in the conduct of affairs over the whole world. If its officers manifested undue pride or rendered themselves disagreeable or obnoxious, it was not the fault of the railroad but of the persons themselves or of the weakness of human nature. But all these reasons and arguments had little effect when it was seen that the Central Pacific and Western Pacific companies, which together were only a little over eight hundred and thirty miles in length and cost not above forty millions of dollars to build, had already received or were to receive in lands and subsidies from the United States, the state and various counties, in addition to their remunerative freights and fares, an amount far exceeding the cost of the road and by some estimated at many times as much, and that they had absorbed or were absorbing all the other lines and transportation of any value on the Pacific coast.

The mutterings of the anti-railroad feeling, which though sometimes heard were comparatively tame and harmlessly remonstrant until a year or two after the driving of the last spike, towards the end of Haight's administration grew into a political storm. Haight, as has already been stated, was renominated by the Democrats for the office of governor. Their state convention that put him forward for the second time met in the assembly chamber in Sacramento on June 20, 1871. In a letter written shortly before nomination, among the usual category of Democratic doctrine, he had expressed his opinion on the railroad question by speaking of the "profligate grants of the public domain to corporations, regardless of the rights of settlers;" and the convention, repeating the same words, charged that these profligate grants had been made by "the radical majority in congress" and that they were "a fraud upon the people of the country." But however decidedly anti-railroad Haight and his supporters thus, towards the end of his four years' term, expressed themselves, they 'Davis' Political Conventions, 296, 299.

32 VOL. IV.

1

were apparently not sufficiently decided to suit the popular will; and it was reserved for an altogether different man-a man of great intellectual force and a brilliant orator, who made his opposition to the granting by government of any subsidies to railroad corporations the principal issue of the campaign-to win the gubernatorial fight and lead the Republicans back to victory. This was Newton Booth. He was a native of Washington county, Indiana, born December 30, 1825. He had been educated at Asbury College, where he graduated in 1846, was admitted to the Indiana bar in 1849, and arrived in California October 18, 1850. After a short residence in Amador county, he located in Sacramento in February, 1851, and engaged in a large and prosperous mercantile and grocery business. Though more or less absorbed in extensive trade, he found time to read extensively, to study history, politics, poetry and general literature and to cultivate his oratorical powers, which were by nature of a high order. He had a pleasant, well-modulated voice and, though rather under the average in size, he was acceptable in appearance and graceful in action. He had occasionally delivered addresses in public, chiefly literary in character; but gradually, as he was an ardent Union man and Republican, he began to make political orations and soon became noted as one of the most effective public speakers in the state. In 1862 he was elected state senator from Sacramento county, and served in the legislature of 1863.

Early in 1871, on account principally of his antagonism to the railroad and the strong and increasing popular feeling in the same direction, he became prominent as the Republican candidate for governor. In the national campaign of 1868, which resulted in the election of Ulysses S. Grant as president and Schuyler Colfax as vice-president of the United States and carried the state of California for them, though by a very small majority, he had done yeoman's service. He was a man of activity as well as ability and in his career from the start preserved his character for integrity. When the Republican state convention met at Sacramento on June 28, 1871, it appeared that the only other person, who had been proposed for the office of governor, was Thomas H. Selby of San Francisco, who had also expressed

himself as opposed to subsidies and, in so far at least, as antirailroad; but he had no following and was withdrawn. Booth was nominated without opposition, with Romualdo Pacheco for lieutenant-governor. In its platform the convention, besides indorsing Grant and his administration and the course and career of the Republican party and also giving expression to its approval of the common school system and its opposition to the Chinese, pronounced the subsidizing of railroads or other private corporations by grants of public lands or taxation in any form as contrary to sound maxims of government, productive of gross corruption and abuse and a plain invasion of the rights of the citizen. It went further and, as the supreme court of the state had decided in favor of the constitutionality of the subsidy laws, it demanded an amendment to the constitution preventing the enactment of such laws for the future and the immediate repeal of the "five per cent subsidy law" that had been passed by the last legislature. It charged the recent Democratic administration with "scandalous abuses of power" and specified as some of the instances of it not only the "palpable and wanton violation of the plain provision of the constitution by the infamous enactment commonly known as the lottery bill," but also its "measureless subserviency to a corrupt lobby evinced by numerous profligate grants of subsidies to railroad companies," which, it affirmed, amounted to four millions of dollars and afforded convincing proof of its “apostasy to all the pledges upon the faith of which it had been elevated to power."

"1

The election took place on September 6, 1871, and resulted in a complete victory for the Republican ticket. Booth was elected by a vote of about sixty-two and a half thousand over fifty-seven and a half thousand for Haight. Pacheco was elected lieutenantgovernor over E. J. Lewis, the Democratic candidate, by about the same vote; and the entire Republican ticket, with one or two exceptions, was successful. At the special judicial election, held on October 11, 1871, the Republican triumph was still more pronounced-Augustus L. Rhodes, the Republican candidate for justice of the supreme court, receiving nearly forty-seven thousand votes as against less than thirty-seven thousand for Selden 1 Davis' Political Conventions, 303–308.