Los Angeles herald., 1891-07-14
SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY IN NEW
HANDS.

railroad circles that there were impor-
tant negotiations going on between
principal eastern syndicate and the
principal stockholders of the Southern
Pacific railway company for the pur-
chase of their interests. At the head
of this syndicate is John ID. Rockefeller,
the Standard oil company president,
who has for some years back steadily
invested his immense surplus in rail
roads, and now is the principal
owner in several eastern roads. The
information now comes to US in tan
gible shape that the Rockefeller syndi-
cate has purchased Huntington's and
the Hopkins estates interest in the
Southern Pacific, and it is believed that
Stanford's is also included in the deal.
However that may be, it is certain that
the new men will have control of the
road, and that it will pass altogether out
OF the control of its old founders and
their natural successors, although
Colonel Charles +. Crocker will still
hold his and his family's interests in
the road.
The word comes to us that Rockefeller
has declared that the first move of the
new purchasers will be to lower the
rates OF fares materially so as to make it
easy for people OF limited means to re-
move to this coast. He is credited with
saying that the new management will at
once reduce the rate of first-class over
land fares to $50. If they will do this
they will at the start show sound bust
ness sagacity, for with reduced fares
they would carry five passengers where
they now. carry one, and every addi-
tional permanent resident they would
bring to the state would be an additional
factor in their permanent local business.
California has suffered immeasurably
from high and almost prohibitory over
land rates. Had we had cheap fares
from the start we would now have a
population of several millions instead of
meagre million and quarter. If the
new management will start out with the
policy announced and carry it into
effect, this state will soon loom up into
grand proportions, and will astonish the
world with her industrial developments.
We do not care whether this deal has
been in the interest of one or the other
of the factions that have been at swords
points in the Southern Pacific manage
ment for the past year. If it results in
throwing Huntington out or keeping
Stanford in, is of no public consequence
whatever. What the people are inter-
ested in knowing is that it will result
in change of policy in the interest of
the development of the industries Of the
state that must follow the adoption of a
sound and liberal business programme.
The infusion of new eastern blood in
the Southern Pacific will justify us in
the hope that we shall see railroads
conducted on this coast on the energetic
principles that prevail the other side of
the mountains; that wherever there are
new industries to be successfully built
up, mining districts to be opened, fields
of production to be developed, transpor-
tation will not be wanting; that new
roads will be sent out to meet the wants
of new communities, and rates will be
based upon principles of fairness to the
producer as we'll as to the railroads.
In no other part of the United States
would the hundreds of rich mining dis
tricts that are known to exist between
Pioche and this city be permitted to lie
dormant for the want of railroad trans
portation, when it is well known that
they would be at once reused into activ-
ity. and hundreds of thriving mining
communities would grow up where
silence now reigns. if they were con-
nected by rail with the commercial
centers.