The San Francisco call., 1898-05-18
MIR. HUNTINGTON BEFORE THE
 RAILROAD COMMISSION.

l
 | To the Editor of the San Francisco i Call: I spent last week in listening to 1 the interrogation of Collis P. Hunting
 ton by the Railroad Commissioners 1 With sly humor the United States Su-
 preme Court had ordered the commits
 sion to ascertain, as preliminary to
 fixing rates, what the railroads consti-
 tuting the Southern Pacific system cost and what they are worth now; and though the court might just as well have required the commission to aScer-
 tain what it cost to accomplish the in dependence of the United States, and what it is worth in dollars and cents after a century of freedom, still Messrs
 La Rue, Hinton and Clark took the mandate of the court seriously ana
 probed MT. Huntington with questions which neither he nor any one else could answer, and 1t never occurred to their dull minds that they had been sent on fools errand to demonstrate the ao- surdity of the body to which they De- long. They even indulged in gallery play of assuming that the witness was fencing with their questions to conceai the truth, and jibed at him Just as Cotton Mather jibed at the Salem w.t. nesses for refusing to explain their re- lations with the devil.
 It is silly investigations of this klno which make California such a laugh ing-stock in the East. The story or the
 building of the Pacific railroad long ago ceased to be mystery requiring investigation Nearly forty years ago it was necessary for the interest ana safety of California that it should De connected with the East by rail; but neither the subsidy voted by Congress nor the land grant supplied money enough for the purpose. To construct the eastern end of the road, Oakes Ames and Thomas c. Durant flung themselves into the arms of the Credit Mobilier, and became financial WreckS wrapped in a black cloud of obloquy;
 the building of the western end de-
 volved on Collis P. Huntington. He put his own money into the enterprise and induced his associates to put theirs. But their combined resources were only a drop in the bucket. He went round hat in hand to men of means, begging vainly for assistance in the work. Of the office of every rich man in Sacra- mento, San Francisco, New York and Boston, the doorstep was worn smooth by his tireless tread. The patience of every ear was exhausted by his per- sistent appeals. But he could make no converts; there came a time when he
 
 had one invariable reply, ''The risk is too great and the profit, if any, too re- mote."
 Tired, but not discomfited, he realized that if the work was to be done he must do it himself. He must lift unaided the stone which the builders rejected. People would neither buy the bonds nor subscribe to the stock of the Central Pacific. An idea broke on him. Per- haps they would take an interest in construction company. So the Con- tract and Finance Company arose. and was followed by the Western Develop ment Company. But capitalists were as shy of them as they had been of the railroad corporation. The risks were too great, and the profits too remote. Thus, not because MT. Huntington so desired. but because he could not help himself, the members of the building corporation and the members Of the railroad corporation were and remained the same individuals. They could in- duce no one to share their risks, and their situation was not improved.
 There was one chance left. If bonds and stock were offered to capitalists in sufficient amounts and at sufficiently low prices, money might possibly be got It was figured out that offers of 1000 mile in bonds, supplemented by an equal amount of stock, might perhaps unloose the purse strings of some who were rich and avaricious. And they did. The securities were sold at a large discount. But they were sold, sparsely and slowly. The road had been running about ten years be- fore the Contract and Finance Com pany paid off the last of the floating debt it had incurred to carry them. It had peddled it's bonds and stock in Bos- ton and New York at all manner Of prices, and had borrowed money on them where it could not sell. It is not likely that either the Contract and F1- nance Company, or the parties with whom it dealt, remembered, twelve months after their transactions, the eX- act terms of each, but now, thirty years afterward, MT. La Rue seriously asks MT. Huntington what the bonds real ized. and MT. Hinton, with sad air and a weary rocking of his head, whines that the ends of justice are de- feated because the president or the Southern Pacific does not state at a blow, from his own recollections, now much money the Contract and Finance 1 Company received TOT securltles WHICH took nearly twenty years to market. Yet MT. La Rue bears the reputation or being an intelligent citizen, and we have Mr. Hintons own assurance that i he is a man of virtue.
 Further designing that the Railroad Commission shall make 1ISeIl Tlulcu- lc,us. the court required it to ascertain | what the various properties constitut- ing the Southern Pacific are worth | now. The only parallel on record is the question of the old schoolmaSter who | insisted that his pupils should state the size of piece of chalk. Railroad properties f1uctuate in value from year to year and from month to month, with | the vicissitudes of business and the prospects of traffic. They are worth | more when crops are good than when they are lean. Their value is less in | a season of drought than in a season | of cCpious rainfall; in a year when | trade is dull, than in year when it is 1 brisk; at a period when traffic Is divid- 1 ed by competition than at period l when the receipts are pooled. Yet the Supreme Court required the Commits sion to elicit from MT. Huntington an arbitrary and definite appraisement of the various roads which constitute the Southern Pacific system, and the Com missioners affected indignation when he confessed his inability to do so The patience with which the old gentleman