From the point of view of Congress, the weakness of the government’s position in 1897 lay in the fact that its debt was secured by a second mortgage, and a mortgage which covered, at that, only a portion of the road. There seems to have been substantial unanimity of opinion among official representatives of the government after 1882 and 1883, that the bond-aided parts of the Pacific railroads would not bring at a forced sale a sufficient price to cover both the first and the second mortgage liens upon them. In fact, it was believed that if the Pacific railroad property should be put up at foreclosure sale, no bidder would appear except the Huntington-Stanford interest, and perhaps the Union Pacific Railway. Under these circumstances the price obtained was sure to be low, and it was not unlikely that the result of the sale would be to leave the railroad in the hands of its original owners free from all obligations to the government. “These very men whom you are now scolding about,” said Mr. Powers, of Vermont, in 1897, “the very men who own the terminals and own these connecting lines are the only ones who can safely bid on the property, and probably they will be the only bidders. They would get the property at their own figures.”[565] Stockholders’ Liability It is true that there were two possibilities that improved the government’s position slightly. The first was found in the suggestion that directors or stockholders of the Central Pacific might in some way be held individually responsible for the debts of the company. If this could be done, the great wealth of the Stanford-Huntington group made the resource a substantial asset. It was pointed out by anti-railroad men that the Central Pacific was a California corporation, and that under California law each stockholder of a railroad corporation was liable, in proportion to the stock owned and held by him, for all its debts and liabilities. Moreover, the directors of the Central Pacific were said to be liable as directors because of the diversion of Central Pacific funds to the payment of dividends at a time when the company owed the government and its first mortgage bondholders large sums which it was unable to pay. In addition the directors were charged with illegal use of Central Pacific money in the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad.