It was probably not true in general that the financial embarrassment in which many of the counties of California were plunged late in the sixties was due to the pressure of interest charges on bonds issued in aid of railroad construction. The highest rates of taxation for county purposes uncovered by the special legislative committee of 1868 which investigated this matter, were $36.70 per $1,000 for Tuolumne County, and $40 per $1,000 for Calaveras County, neither of which counties had issued bonds in aid of railroads. Extravagance in assistance tendered to railroads was only one of the financial sins of which the counties had been guilty. Nevertheless the burden of outstanding indebtedness for railroads was often severe on communities of declining industry and population, and contributed to the later severe revulsion in popular sentiment with regard to the desirability of local aid to railroad enterprise. Opposition by Other Transportation Interests It is proper to mention at this point, also, as throwing light upon popular sentiment, the opposition of the smaller transportation interests of the state to the development of the Central Pacific project. These interests included the stage companies, the express companies, the toll roads, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. In the aggregate their influence was considerable, and it was constantly thrown against the granting of aid to the Central Pacific. It is a curious commentary upon the effect of government subsidies, that the Huntington-Stanford group brought part of this opposition upon themselves by a deliberate refusal to buy up the Sacramento Valley Railroad for the reason that it was cheaper to build at the expense of the federal government from Sacramento to Auburn than to buy a railroad already in active operation for most of the distance between these points. In cold figures, it would have cost $400,000 to build a new line out of Sacramento, and $285,000, according to Central Pacific engineers, to put the Sacramento Valley Railroad in thoroughly good physical condition. But under federal legislation, to be described in a later chapter, only $250,000 out of the $400,000 would have to be paid by the Central Pacific in cash, leaving a clear gain of $35,000 if the policy of construction were pursued.[66] The result of this decision was to cause the backers of the Sacramento Valley project to denounce the Central Pacific enterprise as a fraud.[67] End of Local Subsidies