There is a strong prejudice existing here and daily growing stronger, against the Central Pacific Railroad Company. The members from Placer, Nevada, and El Dorado counties are all of them, I suppose, pledged to endeavor to obtain a reduction of the rates of freight and fare on the line. Petitions, apparently signed by nearly all the residents of the districts which use the road for the transportation of freight and travel, have poured in upon the legislature, asking a reduction of prices. It is said that traders who complain of the rates are discriminated against. A general feeling exists that, considering how liberally it has been dealt with by Congress and the State, the management of the business and affairs of the company is extremely illiberal.... In like vein the _Stockton Independent_ said of the owners of the Central Pacific in 1871: No set of men on the face of the globe were ever placed in a more enviable position, or in one where by the exercise of a reasonable foresight, they could have retained their popularity and the friendship of the people. It is now hardly two years since this work was completed, and how remarkable has been the change in public sentiment. Along the whole line of their main trunk road from San Francisco to Ogden, as well as along the various branch roads of this company, nothing is heard but one continuous murmur of complaint, and it is safe to assert that this shortsighted, illiberal, and suicidal policy of the company has so completely changed the sentiment of the people that there is not in a single town on any of their lines of road, either in this state or Nevada, one individual who approves of this course, nor one who will speak well of the company, unless it be one of their subsidized agents or strikers. Beginnings of State Regulation It is not necessary to dwell at this point on the reasons for the opinions voiced in these extracts from the press. The feeling of the general public, of which these extracts are the reflection, was doubtless due in part to anger at the methods employed by the Central Pacific in promoting subsidy legislation, in part to disappointment over the results of railroad construction, and in part to reaction against policies of the Central Pacific such as have been outlined in previous chapters. However this may be, the result was the passage of the so-called O’Connor bill in 1876, which erected a State Board of Transportation Commissioners, and defined and prohibited extortion and unjust discrimination. The commissioners were not only to enforce these prohibitions, but they were given extensive authority to secure information from the steam railroads of the state, and were charged with the duty of supervising all such railroads with reference to the security and accommodation of the public.[260]