USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 50
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There were other causes that produced friction. Foremost among these was the obvious intent of the Railroad to retain control of the minerals of the lands donated by act of congress. The provisions of the grant appeared clear enough, but the apprehension that they would be disregarded was so great that the legis- lature in 1865 passed a resolution asking the government to withhold patents until a determination should be reached which would clearly decide the rights of miners. In the meantime, however, patents for some 450,000 acres had been issued, which were later discovered to have been drawn in conformity with the provision of the act excluding mineral lands from the grants.
Despite these differences, and the hostilities they engendered, there was no serious diminution of the confidence of the people that the completion of the trans- continental railroad would work a marvelous change in conditions. But there was a growing perception of the fact that if all the benefits obtainable from com- munication with the East were to be derived, it would be necessary to secure greater facilities than a single road could afford, and that competition would be required to prevent the Central Pacific holding a monopoly which would place the industries of the state absolutely under its control.
This feeling extended to all parts of the state with which the corporation had dealings, but was most acute in San Francisco where it was beginning to be per- ceived that the development of the state's resources was being lost sight of by the
Railroad Shirks Taxation
Railroad's Shylockian Policy
Grabbing Mineral Lands
Early Fears of Monopoly
General Apprehension
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railroad managers in their eagerness to increase their wealth and power. Hence we find San Franciscans nearly three years before the opening of the first overland line which occurred in 1869 actively advocating, and to some extent assisting in the promotion of a rival transcontinental road. It cannot be said that San Fran- cisco's assistance was very intelligently extended. It certainly was not of the sort calculated to secure active opposition, for it was permitted to develop into a scheme to exclude all rivals from California territory.
One of the remarkable contradictions of the Californian, and particularly the San Franciscan attitude toward the Railroad in the days preceding the driving of the last spike of the Central and Union Pacific, and during many years afterward, was furnished by the treatment accorded to what was known as the Atlantic and Pacific project. In July, 1866, a transcontinental road known by that name was authorized by congress. It was to start from Springfield, Missouri, and run through Albuquerque in New Mexico, to the headwaters of the Little Colorado, and thence as nearly as practicable along the 35th parallel of latitude to the Colorado and thence to the Pacific. The credit of the government was not extended to this enter- prise, but liberal rights of way and land grants as extensive as those made to the Union and Central Pacific were promised.
Although this project was advocated largely on the ground that it would provide a rival line, and thus destroy the possibility of monopoly, very little attention was paid by San Franciscans to the machinations of the Central Pacific managers de- signed to prevent any competing line entering the state. California's representa- tives and senators lent themselves to the scheme of the Central Pacific, and assisted in effectually excluding all rivalry for many years. At the instance of the corpora- tion, in the same act which authorized the construction of the Atlantic and Pacific, a provision was inserted which gave the Southern Pacific railroad, a company incorporated in California in 1865 to build a road from San Francisco to San Diego, and thence to the state line, to connect with a road from the Mississippi river, the same right of way privileges and equal grants of land.
The purpose of this move was obvious and was the subject of comment, but called forth no opposition from the business interests of San Francisco. The prospects of obtaining communication with the South overshadowed the possibility or probability of excluding rivalry. A number of arguments were employed which appealed with more or less force to the somewhat limited business capacity of the people. It was urged that the interests of California would be best subserved by its own people retaining control of its transportation facilities, and the idea of an Eastern corporation exploiting the state was deprecated. But the arguments em- ployed were of far less assistance to the schemes of the Central Pacific managers than the general apathy which was only disturbed by the evils of the immediate present and took little account of the future.
Bogus Rivalry of Southern Pacific
The Atlantic and Pacific Company after securing its congressional authoriza- tion made haste slowly to avail itself of its privileges. The land grant did not appear to greatly tempt investors, and the building of a road to the Colorado river held out no particular inducements to men who were far seeing enough to recognize that the objective of a transcontinental line should be the greatest city on the Pacific coast, and not an unknown place on the banks of a river whose only outlet to the ocean was through foreign territory. Further, the activities produced at the East by the disbursements of the tremendous sums borrowed from foreigners to
The Atlantic and Pacific Project
A Rival Road Asked For
Belping to Shut Out Rivals
UNION COLLEGE, LOCATED AT THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF SECOND AND BRYANT STREETS, IN 1865 This was one of the earliest institutions of learning in the city
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UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSE, 1868, ON CORNER OF BATTERY AND WASHINGTON STREETS
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carry on the war were subsiding, and the reaction caused by the heavy drain on the purse of the people to provide the necessary revenue was beginning to make men cautious. As a result of these various causes the Southern Pacific practically had the field to itself, and succeeded in preventing an outside corporation from entering California for many years, thus virtually placing all of the rail transpor- tation facilities within the state, and those extending from it beyond its border, in the control of one set of men; for the bogus rival of the Central Pacific was the creation of the men who ran the latter.
Meanwhile the construction of the original road was proceeding rapidly, and its projectors were making enormous fortunes by resorting to methods which flagrantly disregarded the rights of stockholders. The Contract and Finance Com- pany, by which the managers made the work of construction cost an immensely larger sum than it would have been necessary to expend, had the affairs of the corporation been honestly conducted, made tremendous earnings which were chiefly employed in the promotion of other enterprises, all of which were designed to strengthen the hold the little group of men engaged in the huge enterprise for which every dollar employed in the undertaking was provided by the people.
In 1867 the western division of the transcontinental road had crossed the Sierra and reached the state boundary line 140 miles from Sacramento, the Union Pa- cific at the same time had built westward over the plains of Nebraska and had laid 550 miles of track. Although this still left a gap of more than a thousand miles between Omaha and San Francisco, the prospects of early completion were be- ginning to make themselves felt in attempts to interfere with the plans of the Central Pacific managers to absolutely control the situation. One of these obstacles came in the form of a company organized to build a road from Vallejo to Sacra- mento with a branch to Marysville from Davisville. It was named the California Pacific, and its purpose was to greatly shorten the route to San Francisco from Sacramento by the Western Pacific. The managers of the Central Pacific endeavored by every possible method to prevent the California Pacific entering Sacramento, but their efforts were unavailing. A bridge was built across the river in 1870, but in 1871 Milton S. Latham, the president of the road disposed of his interest and that of his friends to the Central Pacific, which by this time had so strengthened its resources that it was able to buy off and absorb every property which threat- ened rivalry or in any way menaced its absolute control of California's transporta- tion facilities.
Whatever may be said in condemnation of the methods of Stanford, Huntington and Crocker, they planned boldly and with great forethought. Much credit has been bestowed on men who came on the scene later, for carrying out policies which their sagacity and absolutely unscrupulous mode of carrying out projected schemes alone made possible of accomplishment. Their achievements were extraordinary, but they do not indicate the vastness of their ambition. It is well nigh impossible in the light of the changed conditions produced by the growth of population, the enormous increase of capital and the weakening regard for vested rights, to believe that sane men should have entertained the idea of absolutely dominating a region of imperial proportions and resources, but there can be no doubt that these men were firmly convinced that their plans would culminate in giving them complete control over the economic destinies of California.
The Contract and Finance Company
Progress of the Central Pacific
Bold and Far Seeing Plans
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The audacity of many of their schemes is only matched by the success which attended their efforts to put them into execution. The phenomenal accomplishment of a group of four men, practically without capital, building 833 miles of railroad and making enough out of the operation to construct a rival line three times as long as the parent road has been referred to or rather foreshadowed, but it does not surpass, except as an exhibition of spectacular energy, the wonderful success attained in completely subjecting the people of the State of California to the will of the corporation. We have accounts of men in antiquity whose ambition led them to impose their rule on nations, but it is doubtful whether the worst of them were ever animated by motives as sordid as those which prompted the Central Pacific quartet to impose their rule on California. Even Alaric may be credited with a desire for glory; we know Theoderic did aim to be great; but the far reaching plans, the unscrupulous schemes and the wilful defiance of law, and the corruption practiced by the Central Pacific corporation were wholly influenced by the desire to place the people under a system which would make them perpetually yield tribute.
To this end their minds appear to have been wholly devoted, and when one of the number occasionally surrendered to the weakness of human vanity in a way that might interfere with the perfection of the plans for complete domination he was sternly rebuked by the man who ultimately came to the front as the guiding spirit of the corporation. The disclosures made during the trial of the case brought against the company by the widow of David Colton, who claimed to have been overreached in a bargain made by her after the death of her husband, a man high in the confidence of the magnates, show that Collis P. Huntington seriously dis- approved of the ostentatious display of wealth by his partners, and that he regarded with contempt every deviation from the course they had mapped out for them- selves to build up a vast railroad system which would give them absolute control of all the approaches to the State of California.
That some of the schemes of the magnates miscarried, or failed of realization, was not due to lack of capacity to plan and ability to execute the possible. They dreamed of commanding all the feasible methods of entering San Francisco, but they neglected to take into consideration the changes the future might bring in the way of overcoming obstacles which at the time they were working most actively must have seemed insuperable. In the Sixties it did not occur to anybody to assume that there would be an expansion of needs great enough to override difficulties which seemed to make impracticable methods and operations now performed with ease. Men were optimistic but their optimism was still dominated by practicability, and their plans for the future were usually based on observation of existing needs, and took no account of their increasing in geometrical ratio. When men spoke of the City as a metropolis destined one day to count its population by millions, they did not reduce their optimistic prediction to a thinkable form. They had no clearer conception of what such a city would require than the average man has of the word trillion or billion which simply means to him an enormous sum too great to be considered concretely. The men who under the inspiration of Huntington looked so far into the future rose above this restraint, but did not wholly escape its in- fluence. They may have believed that San Francisco was destined to have its millions, but they laid many of their plans as if they were convinced that it could
Audacious Schemes Carried Through
The Colton Trial
Needs of Future Underesti- mated
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never increase its wants to such an extent that the provisions they made for meet- ing them could prove inadequate.
This is the impression produced by reading the comment on such operations as the effort to control the water front of Oakland and to secure possession of Goat island for terminal purposes. At this distance of time it may seem amusing to us that the people of San Francisco should have regarded with alarm the at- tempts of the Central Pacific to make their port difficult of access. But in the closing years of the Sixties there were no visions of Dumbarton Point bridges, and no one dreamed of the possibility of tunneling the bay. The only thought that suggested itself was that the machinations of the railroad managers might prove successful and that the City would be bottled up. And there is no doubt that the manipulators deemed the bottling scheme entirely practicable, and that they had little fear that the operation would prove disastrous to the port.
That no apprehension of evil consequences entered the mind of the men who sought to gain complete control of Oakland's water front, after obtaining generous concessions from the legislature which enabled them to obtain for a trifle a large slice of that of San Francisco, is shown by the boldness they displayed in carrying out their plans. In 1868 they set in motion a scheme which made a long step toward the accomplishment of their object. A corporation was formed under the name of the Oakland Water Front Company, which designed acquiring all the existing wharves in that city and all the lands upon which wharves might be built. It named as trustees, Horace N. Carpentier, Leland Stanford, John B. Felton, Edward R. Carpentier, Lloyd Teris and Samuel Merritt. On the 31st of March, 1868, Horace Carpentier, who claimed to own by contract and deed from the city of Oak- land, all the lands in front of it, between high tide and ship channel, executed a conveyance to the Water Front Company, and on the day following that con- cern deeded to the Western Pacific Railroad Company four hundred acres of the most valuable part of the city's frontage on the bay. The distrust created by the move- ment was in a measure allayed by the Western Pacific Company agreeing to convey to the city of Oakland certain wharf, dock and toll rights between Franklin and Webster streets, and within 18 months to extend and complete its road to and along the Oakland water front, and within three years to expend not less than $500,000 in making improvements.
The people of Oakland, which was a very small city at the time, regarded the bargain as a good one. Their point of view was not the same as that of San Francisco. They were eager to have the railroad penetrate their town, and as the agreement resulted in the building of a road from Oakland to Niles on the main line of the Western Pacific, and in the construction of a line through Alameda to Hay- wards, and in some improvements on the water front the feeling was one of satis- faction not much tinged with apprehension. Even when all these various improve- ments were absorbed by the Central Pacific a year or two later no suspicion existed that the Carpentier blanket claim might be so stretched that the city would be prevented from giving to other companies the privilege of access to its water front.
At the same time that preparations were being made by the Central Pacific to control the approaches to San Francisco through Oakland, its emissaries were actively at work in the legislature securing from that body important privileges and donations. On the 28th of March, 1868, a bill was passed granting to the
Bottling up a Port
Oakland Water Front
Oakland Accepts a Mess of Pottage
Controlling Approaches to the City
368
SAN FRANCISCO
Terminal Central Pacific Railway Company, submerged and tide lands which aggregated 150 acres, to be used for terminal purposes. It was over the lands thus granted that the first long wharf extending into the bay from Oakland was con- structed. The act that donated the tide lands-they were appraised at the insig- nificant sum of $3 an acre-also accorded the privilege of reclaiming the intervening space and connecting it with the Oakland and Alameda shore. This has since been done, and much valuable land for the terminal purposes of the company has been created. The only condition exacted by the legislature was the expenditure of $100,000 upon improvements, and that a rail and ferry connection between San Francisco and the terminal lands should be provided within four years.
Mission Bay Lands Granted
Two days after the making of this grant the legislature, March 30, 1868, author- ized the granting by a Board of Tide Land Commissioners of thirty acres of sub- merged land in Mission bay, south of Channel street, and outside of the old red water front line, together with a 200 feet wide right of way over state lands to enable the Western Pacific and Southern Pacific to reach the terminal which it was proposed to create by reclaiming the property. This improvement was not begun within the time provided and an extension was granted to the company in March, 1870, to which was attached a proviso that a first class road should be constructed from Oakland on the Bay of San Francisco to a point on the Straits of Carquinez, opposite the town of Vallejo. The construction of such a road would have given an all rail connection with the East by ferrying the trains over the waters of the strait. The road was subsequently constructed, but the people had to submit to many delays before their desires were realized, the railroad managers finding it more expedient to push their plans in other directions than to promote the interests of San Francisco by hastening all rail connection by a shortened route.
Any attempt to accurately describe the attitude of the public towards the railroad while these schemes were being projected and carried out would be misleading, because it was extremely contradictory. There was laudation of the corporation's enterprise, and on the other hand keen criticism of what some of the papers char- acterized as the "hoggishness" of the projectors of the transcontinental railroad. It was urged by some that the generosity of the government had provided more than sufficient funds to build the overland railroad, and that it was pure effrontery for the builders to endeavor to secure more favors by begging and manipulating legis- latures, but the most vigorous condemnation was that directed against the creation of the Contract and Finance Company by which the men on the inside were enabled to enrich themselves at the expense of the stockholders. The language used in denouncing these machinations was of the plainest, and epithets were applied to the managers which were actionable, but they went on with their plans serenely indiffer- ent to public opinion.
Perhaps their disregard of adverse opinion was not wholly without justifica- tion. There was unquestionably a strong sentiment in the community, and through- out the state generally, that the benefits which would result to California through the activities of the projectors of the first overland railroad, would more than repay the people for any toll that the manipulators might exact. There had already been developed at that time something like a perception of the fact that men who were at the back of quasi public enterprises were in a sense under obligation to deal fairly with the people, but it did not assert itself very strongly. The so-called best opinion was extremely conservative, and was uncompromisingly opposed to
Indifference to Criticism
Greed of Railroad Managers
369
SAN FRANCISCO
regulation. Very few were disposed to demand that men in dealing with the com- munity or with stockholders should strictly observe the standard of honesty set up for individuals.
In short there was no public conscience in the Sixties of the kind we are now familiar with, but it developed with surprising rapidity in California in the next decade, so fast indeed, that it took a quarter of a century for the East to catch up with and absorb the ideas evolved while the state was under the domination of the men who later came to be comprehended in the term "the Railroad." No one in San Francisco on May 10, 1869, the day on which the last spike was driven at Promontory in Nevada, which connected the rails of the Central and Union Pacific railroads, suspected what the future held in store. He who would have predicted on that day that in less than a decade the men whose energies made the connection possible would in a few years become the most heartily despised and feared men in California, would have been deemed a lunatic.
On that day at least, all San Francisco concurred in singing the praises of the men who had at last brought about a realization of the hopes entertained for twenty years. The railroad was at length completed, and the state was to enter upon an era of prosperity. Bands played their music, the militia and civic bodies marched to the inspiring strains of national and other airs, the Stars and Stripes floated to the breeze from innumerable business and other houses handsomely decorated to celebrate the event. No one on that May day in 1869 ventured to express a doubt that the people might be "paying dearly for their whistle." Good feeling ran so high it would have been deemed sacrilege to speak disparagingly of the man who, surrounded by an assemblage of about a thousand persons, drove the gold spike into the polished tie of California laurel, which had a plate of silver on which was engraved the names of the officers of the Union and Central Pacific companies. Every one on that day believed that the record on the silver plate conferred an undying fame on those whose names were inscribed upon its brilliant surface. No one dreamed that a few short years thereafter the men so honored on May 10, 1869, would be execrated by a majority of those who celebrated and rejoiced over the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.
Developing a Public Conscience
The Driving of the Last Spike
Vol. I-24
CHAPTER XXXIX
LABOR CONDITIONS AND THE CHINESE QUESTION
ORGANIZATION OF A CENTRAL TRADES ASSEMBLY-STRIKE OF FOUNDRY EMPLOYES- LABOR AND POLITICS-ATTEMPT TO PASS AN EIGHT HOUR LAW-FORMATION OF AN EIGHT HOUR LEAGUE-TRADES UNIONS IN 1867-A WORKINGMEN'S CONVENTION- LABOR LEADERS FAVOR POLITICAL ACTION-WORKINGMEN WIN IN PRIMARY ELEC- TIONS-TRADE UNIONISM RECEIVES A BACKSET-WOMEN WORKERS-THE WORKING- MEN AND THE CHINESE-RACE PREJUDICE IN EARLY DAYS-LEGISLATIVE INVESTI- GATION IN 1852-SAN FRANCISCANS TOLERANT OF CHINESE-OPPOSITION TO CHI- NESE IMMIGRATION-RAILROAD IMPORTS CHINESE LABORERS-FEW JAPANESE-AS- SUMED NEED OF ORIENTAL LABOR-LAND MONOPOLY AND CHINESE LABOR.
Labor Conditions in the Sixties
T IS sometimes assumed that the relations of employer and employed were not rudely disturbed in California until OF the late Seventies. Those who assert that such was the case have no warrant for doing so. The evidence is over- whelming that San Francisco was the center of difficulties + SEA OF SAN SCO created by the activities of trades unionism long before the opening of that decade. It is true that during the first few years following the gold discoveries the differences between the employer and the worker were adjusted without much friction, and it is even recorded that the losing party in successful strikes actually conceded that the success of their op- ponents did no serious harm and benefited the whole community by more thoroughly diffusing the gold gathered by the miners. But this condition did not endure very long. Indeed there were signs of its disturbance before the outbreak of the Civil war, but organization was lacking and the troubles were sporadic and were dealt with easily because employer and employed generally settled their differences with- out the intervention of outsiders. Shortly after the firing on Sumter, however, there were indications of unrest. The workingmen of San Francisco were undoubt- edly in much better ease than most of their fellows at the East. Their nominal wages were considerably higher than those in the states on the other side of the Rockies, and the purchasing power of the money they earned was not impaired as was that of the workers on the Atlantic seaboard by the rapid advance in prices of all commodities. Although the merchants were getting rich by buying goods for greenbacks and selling them for gold, their profits were not made at the expense of the mechanic or artisan who had been able to maintain a satisfactory wage rate during the period of descending prices which followed the flush times of the Fifties and continued until San Francisco began to feel the effects of the disastrous panic and depression of the closing years of that decade.
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