The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-07-19
THE CROKER MILLIONS
SMALL WAY IN WHICH THEIR AC-
EMULATION WAS COMMENCED.
Only EGuaIed by ROckefeIIer's Leap
ford, Huntington and Hopkins.
Philadelphia Telegraph.

nia-the land that has brought forth full
blossomed twenty-millionaires in single
decade. Nothing equal to it was ever seen
in the East. except the sudden leap to vast
fortune of Rockefeller and the other men
who struck oil and manipulated pipe lines
until they controlled vast territories and
rolled up wealth by the tens of millions.
Charles Croker the father of Col. Charles
F. Croker, like Huntington Stanford and
Hopkins had made a modest competence
of $4,000 or Whereabouts just before the out
break Of the rebellion. He was carrying
on a small retail dry goods store in Sacra-
mento, then, as now, the capital of Cali
fornia 1t was the Quitting point for
miners and a general trading resort for
ranchmen, who came in from a radius of
a hundred miles; but it was a dull place,
very provincial in its ideas; blazing hot in
the long summer, with little choice of drink
between the river water, which was yellow
than that of the Missouri and the whis-
ky which rasped even the tough throat of
the pioneer.
Near Crocker's store were the general
grocery store of Leland Stamford, then
well-known as a politician and the hard
ware establishment of Huntington q Hop
kins All these men, except Hopkins, came
from New York State; all except Stanford
were bred in extreme poverty; not one re-
ceived any aid starting out in life, and
only One-Stanford-had the advantage OF
legal training. They all, however, had
the commercial instinct strongly developed,
and Mark Hopkins was a genius in practi-
cal finance, whose devotion to book-keep-
ing and cutting down expenses reduced his
life by twenty years.
About the time that John Browns body
began Wondering in the grave the COM
bined wealth of these four neighbors in
Sacramento could not have exceeded $780,,
GOO; yet, with this small sum as a basis,
they entered on the project of building a
transcontinental railroad which should span
the almost impossible Sierras and connect
with the Union Pacific Railroad, then just
Venturing out from Omaha on it's westward
march over the prairies. The project orig
mated with Stanford, and so strongly was
he impressed with its feasibility that he
persuaded cautious men like Hopkins to
embark their small fortune in what seemed
to the general public like visionary
scheme doomed to early failure.
SECURING ASSISTANCE.
Stanfords scheme was to receive state
and national aid for the work, so that when
their own private means and credit We're
exhausted they could fall back on this ma
tional bulwark and push the enterprise to
success. So Huntington was sent to Wash
ington to secure national aid, Stanford
worked the State for assistance, Croker
was assigned the task of building the road,
and Hopkins kept sharp eye on the eX-
penditures Stanford received liberal con-
cesSiOnS from the State and from the cOun-
| ties through which the railroad was to be
! built, While Huntington engineered the
scheme so well at " Washington that he got
through a bill granting the Central Pacific
Railroad every alternate section of land
for twenty miles on each side of the road,
well 10000 for every mile of road
actually constructed.
From this time on success was assured.
Immense difficulties were met in the build
ing of the road over the summit of the
snow-capped Sierras. Even greater diff
cultleS We're overcome IN securing FUNDS
when the bonds of the government were so
deprecated that $500 only realized $40 in
gold in the money markets of the world.
Nevertheless the road moved on to COM
pletion, and finally the last spike was driven
on May TO- 1869. The driving of that spike
was the signal for the influx of wealth upon
the projectors of the great enterprise, such
as they had never dreamed of. They had
all worked hard, in the face of great dis
enlargement To Croker had been as
signed the actual supervision of the railroad
building. He was q man of immense en-
ergy, whose tastes lay in the direction of
the supervision of large bodies of men. He
lived in the railroad camps for years, sell
dom coming to the city except on pressing
business He Jared no better than his men;
he dressed in a flannel shirt and overalls;
he seldom drank, but he generally went to
bed with his boots on; in word, he lived
the toughest kind of life, cut off from So
ciety, domestic life and all the pleasures
which wealth could bring him in the young
Western metropolis by the Golden Gate.
He seemed to have one consuming ambition
to beat the Union Pacific and to demon
strate that snow-coVered mountains offered
no obstacle to modern engineering science.
He was the boss OF an army OF contrac-
tors and their men. He often guided the
operations of 1900 Chinese, scattered along
over miles of rough mountain country.
Only a man of immense physique could
have endured this great strain without rest
or recreation. But Croker had a constttu-
fs<r, z ivOfo no n
He liked the rough companlonshlp or the
railroad camp. Where Huntington or
success, but in the diplomatic life in WASH
ington he would have been i'll at ease and
failure and he could never have carried
through the negotiations which Stanford
managed with so much art. In fine, the
combination of these four railroad kings
was as perfect as their plans; each did
no waste everything moved with the ease
of a great Corliss engine, but this central
power was immense and far-reaching, and
it revolutionized the Western country in
single generation
Croker came out of the seven years
hard work in better physical condition than
when he began, and until within the last
three or four years OF his llfe'-he died in
August, 1888, as the result of being thrown
from his carriage more than two years be-
fore-he retained this splendid Vigor that
was the envy of all who saw him. A cor
respondent writing of him year before his
Il remember about six years ago seeing
him early one morning in the scantiest of
bathing costume at Monterey, ready for a
plunge in one Of the huge salt water tanks.
His shoulders lOked like those of Slugger
Sullivan and the muscles stood out on his
back in great ridges. AS he walked with
light step to the edge of the tank and took
a plunge the bilious-lOoking attendant of
the bathing house remarked, with q sigh:
I'd rather be put up like him to-day than
to have his millions
CROCKER's LATER LIFE.
So, although Croker was well on in years
when the construction of the Southern Pa
cifc began, he supervised personally the
work on that road also, and it was rushed
through Southern California, Arizona and
New Mexico at a pace which would have
annoyed the builders of a decade before.
Meanwhile Charles Croker managed to
get a good deal of satisfaction out of this
life When wealth began to pour in on him
by the hundreds of thousands he left Sacra-
mento with Stanford and Hopkins, and
took up his abode in San Francisco, where
the main offices of the Central Pacific were
located. Like his two partners, he had a
strong desire for a fine home. SO the three
bought contiguous property on the summit
OF California-street hill, and began the
erection of splendid homes. Stanford spent
nearly 81 900 600 on the decorations, furni-
kins lavished about 81, $50 900 on his Norman
castle, while Croker built a great roomy
house, of no special architectural beauty
and finished it in such imperial style that il
is estimated that he spent altogether
81 500 900 on this home hobby. When these
palaces were built Kearney, the sand-lot
dealer dubbed this part of town Knob
hi h., ~