Stanford says that he bought 2,300 shares of Central Pacific at ten cents on the dollar at one time, in order to accommodate a stockholder,[29] and it appears that Charles and A. B. Crocker transferred their stock to Huntington, Hopkins, and Stanford in 1873, for $13 a share.[30] No attempt to sell Central Pacific stock generally was made until 1873, and it was not listed on the Stock Exchange until 1874.[31] Bond Sales As a matter of fact, there was no sale at the beginning even for Central Pacific mortgage bonds. Huntington went to New York to get these securities started among the moneyed men there, and after a while he had some small success. But D. O. Mills gave it as his deliberate judgment on a later occasion that there was the greatest difficulty in securing loans on the bonds the Central Pacific had to offer—including government, county, convertible, state aid, and first mortgage bonds—to as much as 75 per cent of the face value of the issues.[32] Iron for the first 50 miles out of Sacramento was delivered to the associates only after they had given their own personal obligations secured by deposit of the company’s bonds. An agreement was entered into, besides, that Huntington and his friends would be responsible, as individuals, for ten years, for the payment of interest on these bonds.[33] After 1864 conditions improved somewhat, and first mortgage bonds were disposed of at about 75, while convertible and state aid bonds brought 56 and 65 respectively.[34] Yet at the time when the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad was finished the private property of every one of the directors of the company was mortgaged up to the limit of all his individual credit would possibly allow and bear. The notes of the four associates were outstanding everywhere, many of them bearing interest rates as high as from 10 to 12 per cent, and the statement is made that Leland Stanford alone upon one occasion had his account at the bank overdrawn to the extent of $1,300,000.[35] The consideration of possible Central Pacific Railroad receipts, other than those derived from government aid and perhaps from the sale of the company’s first mortgage bonds, brings us back to Stanford’s list as containing substantially all the assets upon which the promoters of the Central Pacific were able to rely. Almost half of these assets were derived directly from political bodies of one type or another, and the value of the remainder of those assets was dependent for the most part upon the security which was afforded by the government donations made to the company. State and Local Grants