Still another question is how far the headquarters of the Central Pacific in the various capitals were used as agencies for the election of legislators and other persons who owed their position to railroad influence. It is the unhesitating popular judgment that the railroad at an early date “entered politics.” In a long letter dated August 26, 1873, Eugene Casserly asserted that the Central Pacific aimed to be and was a third party in the politics of the state, holding the balance of power between the Democratic and the Republican parties, and controlling or seeking to control at will each or both of them. “This third party,” continued Mr. Casserly, “has the usual attributes of a political party, the same apparatus and appliances. It has its leaders, its managers, its editors, its orators, its adherents. It selects these from both parties, but mostly from the party in the majority. Whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats, and however they divide or contend on party issues, they move as one man in the cause of the railroad against the people. To that cause they give their first allegiance.” Bassett Polemic This statement of Mr. Casserly calls to mind another charge or series of charges made by a man named J. M. Bassett in the years following 1892. Mr. Bassett was one of the early pioneers. He came to California in 1851, and was at various times miner, printer, newspaper man, railroad employee, and member of the Oakland city council. At one time he was Leland Stanford’s secretary. After Mr. Stanford had been forced out of the presidency of the Southern Pacific, Bassett began to publish a series of open letters to Collis P. Huntington, and continued them weekly, with occasional intervals, for several years. The sustained vivacity and pungency of this polemic, and the systematic virulence with which Bassett reviewed and criticized the Huntington policies make the series a noteworthy journalistic achievement. Mr. Bassett denounced Mr. Huntington for the overcapitalization of the Southern Pacific system, for its failure to pay taxes, for its carelessness of the lives of its employees and of the public, for its attempt to evade repayment of the debt which it owed to the United States government, and for the general mismanagement which, he asserted, had taken place under Huntington’s control. With respect to the interference of the Southern Pacific in politics, Bassett wrote to Huntington in 1895: What chief executive of the State, before the present incumbent, has there been who did not owe his nomination and election to the Southern Pacific Company and in acknowledgment of his debt hasten to obey its slightest command? Has there ever been a Board of Railroad Commissioners before last November in which you did not own at least two members? Have you not named every Harbor Commissioner appointed during the past twelve years?