In two years and seven months the only reductions in rates and fares secured by the Railroad Commission were certain cuts in the rates on products of agriculture conceded to the farmer member of the commission by his railroad friends. The commission formulated no principles and worked out no effective procedure. Even its reports to the legislature had little value. The first two were prepared by Mr. Beerstecher, the third by Mr. Tuttle, former railroad commissioner but no longer in any official way connected with regulation work. When the commission was not unanimous in its decisions, the division usually was that of Cone and Beerstecher against Stoneman—a fact which leads us back to the question of the nature of the influence which the Stanford group was able to exert. Bribery Committed The charge is made that the Central Pacific bought and paid for Beerstecher’s services while a member of the Railroad Commission, and that Cone was so influenced by his personal and business relations with the managers of the Central Pacific as to be unable to view their activities in the critical and impartial way which his position demanded. The evidence in the case is purely circumstantial, but seems to be convincing. So far as the former is concerned we have the admitted fact that Beerstecher was richer at the end of his term of office than at the beginning by at least $12,000 and probably by a good deal more. As he put it, he thought he saved his entire salary of $4,000 a year as commissioner, during these years. Beerstecher asserted incidentally that his legal practice while a member of the Railroad Board amounted to from $1,200 to $1,500 a year—although the records of the Superior Court of San Francisco, before which Beerstecher practiced, show that this was highly unlikely,[274] and the testimony of the bailiff to the commission is directly to the contrary. $12,000 may be regarded as adequate compensation for a man of Beerstecher’s type.[275] Gerke Transaction Cone’s case is not quite so simple. It seems unlikely that a man of his standing should have consciously accepted a bribe. There is, however, direct evidence of a reliable character that Cone was given unusual consideration by the railroad in connection with the purchase of certain lands in the northern part of the state, and Cone himself admitted that while he was commissioner he had bought some lands from a man named Gerke and had resold them within two or three months to the treasurer of the Southern Pacific at a profit of $100,000.[276]