The record-union., 1895-03-12
PLAIN BUSINESS PROPOSITION TC
THE LEGISLATURE.

THE LEGISLATURE.
If the Legislature acts in haste in this
matter of granting terminal privileges to
the San Joaquin Valley Railroad Com
pany it will have reason to 60 in sackcloth
and ashes.
Common business sense ought to pre-
vail with the State when she parts with
the possession of any portion of the pub
lie domain. 1t did not obtain when the
Assembly yesterday voted down the Reid
amendment to the bill conferring certain
powers upon the State Board of Rarbor
Commissioners. The bill as it went
through the Assembly gives authority to
the Harbor Commissioners to give pos
session for a song 10 the new railroad
company of waterfront lands for fifty
years without any proper specification of
duties to be performed by the company,
or any guards or forfeiture provisions,
nor any requirement that there shall be
any improvements made upon the lands,
nor that there shall be any forfeiture for
failure to improve or to build and equip
line of railroad-in fact, there is total
absence Of check or guard sufficient to
secure the State in her rights upon the
property, or reversion of the same to
her, or to compensate her for the princeIy
gift she is asked to make to private cor
poration.
1t will not be challenged by any fair
minded person that in such a case as this
1t would be only ordinary busine
precaution to provide: First, that the
land to be surrendered to private pos
session should be definitely described as
to location and as to metes and bounds;
second, that within a reasonable time
there should be constructed and equipped
and operated substantial railroad of a
given mileage length; third. that the
lease and any and all rights under it
should be absolutely -assignable
under any any and all conditions or
circumstances; that not even the Harbor
Commissioners should have power to
consent to any sub-letting, assigning or
transfer OF the lease, or rights under it,
nor 20 consent to incum brance thereon,
nor to any modification thereof.
Similarly it is impossible for any mind
not prepared to throw away State prop
erty and squander the heritage of the
people. to consent to grant of the asked
for lands for half century, or any other
term, without express proviso as to the
maintenance by the grantee of suitable
conyeniences for crossing from the east
side of the San Francisco Bay to the
granted property.
Ordinary prudence, such as would be
observed in private affairs, demands
that condition should attach to any
such grant or lease, that certain improve
ments. specified in general character and
in minimum value, should be made and
be completed within time stated; more
over. that it should be condition under
grantees shall not only build a railroad,
but shall operate it within a reasonable
time, and that failure in any of these re-
quirements shall work forfeiture of the
lease and vest in the State absolute own
ership OF all such improvements as may
have been made upon the property.
Is there business man in the State,
the owner of even so much as a town lot,
who would part with possession of his
property to another without providing
explicitly for right of forfeiture if the
conditions of the grant were not COM
piled with, and this even though by
operation of law forfeiture were worked
and the improvements made were at
tachments to the land?
1t will certainly be apparent to any
man not mad with haste and greed, that
1t should be provided that the means ot
transport across the bay to and from the
property given over for fifty years should
be of a character adequate to the trans
portation of the products of the State to
the metropolis. 1t would be only COM
monest precaution to require that if 200
miles of the road are not within, say,
three years, completed and in working
order and operation, with adequate
means for eonYazinal ths- aarz~by boat