From the time of his arrival there to the following July, Judah was engaged in energetic lobbying. His brief previous visits to the capitol had acquainted him with the routine of business there, as well as with the personalities of a considerable number of Congressmen. He was aided, also, by the fact that Sargent, at the opening of the session, was assigned to the Pacific Railroad Committee of the House, and by the further circumstance that, with questionable propriety, he, Judah—interested in the outcome of the pending legislation as he was—was made clerk of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Pacific Railroads and secretary of the Senate Pacific Railroad Committee, with the privilege of the floor of the Senate and of the House, and charge of all the papers of the Senate committee. From this position of advantage Judah was able to watch the progress of the Pacific Railroad bill which Mr. Sargent presently introduced, and to guide it to a certain extent. We know that it was Judah who procured the assent of the Kansas company mentioned in the bill to a change which required its road to meet the Union Pacific at the 100th meridian instead of at the 102d meridian. It was Judah also who secured the passage of the amendment retaining for the Central Pacific the timber on mineral land. Mineral lands were excepted from the lands granted to the Pacific railroads, and Judah was afraid lest this clause should deprive the Central Pacific of all benefit from a large part of the lands nominally given it. It was probably Judah, also, though this is less certain, who secured a change in the terms of the government subsidy increasing the amount and altering the distribution so that the largest payments were made for the road across the Sierras and not for the section east of the California state line, where the difficulties of construction were less. These were important matters, and Judah should not have been permitted to urge them from the vantage point of an official position.[73]