Articles of association of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway Company were filed at Sacramento in February, 1895, and construction was begun at Stockton late in the same year. By the end of December, 26.1 miles had been built, carrying the railroad to the Stanislaus River. During 1896 the track reached Fresno, and in 1897 Bakersfield was attained. On June 30, 1898, the company reported a total mileage of 278.91 miles, including a branch to Visalia. It had at that time an authorized capital stock of $6,000,000, of which $2,464,480 was issued and paid in, a funded debt of $2,671,000, and current liabilities of $110,928. The bonds outstanding were mortgage securities bearing 5 per cent interest and maturing in 1940. In 1897 the company reported gross earnings of $209,133 (of which $178,494 were from freight), and operating expenses of $153,102, on an average operated mileage of 123.44 miles. For the year ending June 30, 1898, the earnings were $411,179 and the operating expenses $282,326, on a mileage, however, which was considerably greater. These were the only years for which statistics are available, for the company was purchased by the Santa Fé in December, 1898. The circumstance that the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway was purchased by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé only a few months after the company had completed its road to Bakersfield, served as a dramatic illustration of the fact that alliance with some larger railroad system was considered by its promoters to be essential to the road’s success. There is no question but that this sale of the system came as a shock and a disappointment to many persons whose enthusiasm had been aroused by the proposal to build an independent railroad for the service of shippers in San Francisco and in the San Joaquin Valley. The high hopes of San Francisco merchants could scarcely be satisfied by anything short of a system permanently under the control of the commercial interests of that city. When the San Francisco press declared that San Francisco was preparing to reach out for the trade of all the western part of the American continent, and when the Spreckels committee declared that the new road was to be a people’s road, owned by the people, and operated in the interests of the people,[472] the implication clearly was that the ownership of the property was to remain in the hands of the original subscribers to the stock or in the hands of other persons of like character. Nor was the argument that the construction of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway would prevent the diversion of eastern freight from San Francisco to distributing centers of the South,[473] easily to be reconciled with the sale of the railroad to a company which, like the Santa Fé, had a terminus in Los Angeles. Spreckels Interests