Los Angeles herald., 1910-08-26
THE WESTERN PACIFIC

AT OF even the advent of the first
~ railroad, it is said. aroused
~ greater interest, and scarcely
more enthusiasm, than the opening of
the new Western Pacific the other day,
giving San Francisco and middle Cali
fornia another outlet and inlet to and
from the great mainland. All along
| the line people hailed the first train
with tokens Of gladness in the form
of native products, which they heaped
in the cars until, by the time of ar
rival at San Francisco. it resembled
a rolling feast in honor of Ceres.
Why all this joy? A railroad is
not a novelty in much of the territory
traversed by the Western Pacific. A
railroad train no longer fires the
imagination with pictures of a belated
prosperity as in the pioneer days.
There should be food for reflection for
the great dominating system already
on the ground in this demonstration.
If this system had played fair with
California, if it had shared its pros
perity with it's shippers and merchants
instead of exploiting the state and
maintaining the highest average
charges in the country, if their man
ayers had given q quality of service
commensurate with their privileges, if
they had kept out of politics and re-
Trained from stealing the resources of
the state, often through corrupting
and debauching public officials. it is
positive there would have been no such
joy-though there would doubtless
have been a keen interest-oyer the
advent of the Western Pacific.
The enthusiasm was the cry of
pent-up Utica, hemmed in by the ar
bitrary will of a railroad monopoly,
cry that found another form of ex-
preston at the primaries on August
16. Instinctively, the people hailed the
prospect of real competition as pre-
saying the dawn of better days. In
stnctively, they must have felt the
new spirit animating the managers of
the new system even before it was
given this utterance by Max Thelan,
promising for the law department of
the railroad to keep out of politics:
The Western Pacific is the child
of a new era in the relation be-
tween the railroads and the public.
The chief features of this era con-
sist in the recognition, on the one
hand of the fact that the railroads
are the servants of the people and
that the public has a right, through
its authOritieS-natiO state and
municipal-to regulate them in the
interests of the good of the great
mass Of the people, and, on the
other hand, in a realization of the
fact that the railroads are entitled
to a fair return on an honest
capital. We have come out here in
this new era as a company which
wishes to engage fairly and hon
estIy in the business Of running its
railroad and of giving good service
TO the people. We have tried TO
be fair, and in turn have received
fair treatment, and hope and eX-
pect to continue to receive it. The
Western Pacific has come here as
an Independent railroad free from
the prejudices OF the past, and has
been constructed and started opera
tion in thorough sympathy with the
progressive ideas of the relations
between the railroads and the
public.
Here at last is a corporation that
publicly and voluntarily acknowledges
all its rights as coming from the
public, and the right in morals and
law of that public to share in the
benefits Of its growth, and TO oversee
the business in order to insure the
rights of the public.
Marvel of the twentieth century! A
railroad on California soil treating the
state as its master, not its slave!