“The Golden Gate”
CHAPTERS ON THE HISTORY
OF THE
Southern Pacific
By
STUART DAGGETT, Ph.D.
Professor of Railway Economics and Dean of the
College of Commerce, University of California;
Author of “Railroad Reorganization”
NEW YORK
THE RONALD PRESS COMPANY
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
The Ronald Press Company
PREFACE
So far as the author knows there is no published studywhich discusses in detail the important business problems connectedwith the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad lines.Most of the books which contain references to the SouthernPacific or to the Central Pacific limit themselves to a fewchapters upon the romantic aspects of their construction. Thefew works which treat of the later period confine themselveschiefly to particular episodes in Southern Pacific history, oftenwith the deliberate attempt to discredit the railroad company.The truth is that most writers upon the Southern Pacific haverelied upon the reports of the United States Pacific RailwayCommission or on Bancroft’s “History of California,” andvery few have done original work from source material.
Yet the usable material dealing with the subject of Pacificrailroads is abundant. The Southern Pacific has left a broadtrail in California. The record of its doings is to be found incourt reports; in state, city, and federal records; in the publictestimony, or still better, in the private letters of owners ormanagers of company enterprises; in the reports of the companyitself and of its engineers or other representatives; inpamphlets without number; in files of newspapers. It is truethat much of the data is partisan and unreliable as to details.Yet a partisan statement is serviceable if one knows it to bepartisan, and, if one has reliable information with which tocheck the unreliable, the extent of partisan exaggeration in agiven case becomes itself a fact of no insignificant importance.
Most of the documents used in the following pages havebeen consulted in one or another of three large collections: thatof the Bancroft Library of the University of California; thatof the Hopkins’ Railway Library of Stanford University;[iv]and that of the State Library at Sacramento. Use has alsobeen made of data in the office of the Secretary of State ofCalifornia and of the State Railroad Commission. In certaincases the manuscript has been submitted to officials of theSouthern Pacific Company for their comment, or to shippersor business men who were believed to be well-informed. Thework has been more or less actively in progress over a period ofeight years so that there has been more than usual opportunityfor checking, comparison of views, and the testing of material.It is the author’s hope that he has at lea