As to the fourth subject of inquiry, your committee report that Commissioners Cone and Beerstecher knew of and permitted both systematic and casual discrimination in charges and facilities for transportation between persons and places by railroad corporations in this State, and that through their conduct in permitting and upholding the same, Commissioner Stoneman was unable to accomplish a redress of such discriminations while Commissioner. Further, under this fourth subject of inquiry, your committee find that Commissioner Cone sacrificed the best interests of the State through personal friendship for Governor Stanford, and in return therefor received favors from him; and that Commissioner Beerstecher’s conduct admits of no other explanation than that he was bribed, and that in the opinion of this committee Commissioners Cone and Beerstecher acted in the interests of the railroad corporations rather than of the people. This finding of the legislative committee is justified by the facts elicited in their investigation. CHAPTER XII THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC AND POLITICS Appeals to Public We may now consider in a more general fashion the political methods of the Southern Pacific group during the first thirty years of their railroad history. We have seen that they not only relied upon the talents of their legal staff in taking advantage of defects in the law, but that in two cases—the case of the railroad commission of 1880, and that of the subsidy in San Francisco in 1863—they probably resorted to the direct use of money to accomplish their ends. Yet a whole state cannot be bought, though individuals may be, and it would do injustice to the breadth of view of the associates to suppose that they limited themselves to any such crude device. Indeed, the frequency with which money bribes were offered probably diminished as time went on. Consideration of the general policies of Mr. Stanford and of Mr. Huntington seems to show that they met the public demand for regulation of rates and fares in no less than five distinct ways.