The second campaign for subscriptions to the stock of the Valley road began about August, 1894, when the executive committee of the Traffic Association decided to renew its search for funds. It was now decided to call the new enterprise the San Francisco, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley Railway Company, and to define its route generally as between San Francisco, or some convenient point on the Bay of San Francisco, via Stockton and Fresno by a convenient and practicable route thereafter to be determined, to some point in Kern County. The minimum subscription was again set at $350,000, and, as in the earlier project, a trust was devised to hold the stock of the company and to preserve its status as an independent carrier.[461] In October stock subscription books were thrown open to the public and some thousands of dollars of subscriptions received. Mr. Leeds went to Stockton to see what could be done there. In San Francisco, Mr. Van Sicklen, a member of the executive committee, endeavored to reach the business men of the town in a somewhat systematic fashion. Large subscriptions and small were invited, but once more small success was obtained. The members of the executive committee of the Traffic Association were busy men and disinclined to devote much time to personal campaigning, while, even had they done so, the chances of success were not good. The primary defect in the Traffic Association’s campaign lay in the fact that no man in the group of promoters interested in the new enterprise had sufficient prestige so to impress the public imagination as to lead investors to have confidence from the beginning that the projected railroad would be built. The composition of the Traffic Association was admirable for the purpose of encouraging water competition. It was as inadequate to the financing of a large railroad to be conducted without government support as it had been shown to be to the management of a political campaign. Nor was it unimportant that the organization was asking for a sum which on the face of it was insufficient to accomplish the purposes which were in mind. Nobody pretended that $350,000 would do more than permit of the organization of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway. To build the line would cost ten times that sum or more. Indeed, the company was actually capitalized at $6,000,000, a not unreasonable figure under the circumstances. Thus a subscription to a fund of $350,000 merely committed the subscriber to an enterprise which might involve him, if it was to be successful, in an additional large and undetermined expense, on the penalty of losing his original subscription if the additional sums were not forthcoming. Final Success