Diagram showing adjustment of freight rates between San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and Sebastopol, 1916 268 Diagram showing adjustment of freight rates between Los Angeles and points north and east of Los Angeles, 1916 269 Map showing the line of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway, together with portions of the systems of the Southern Pacific and of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, 1898 325 Map showing mileage owned in 1913 by the Central Pacific Railway and the Southern Pacific Railroad (opposite) 432 CHAPTERS ON THE HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC CHAPTER I INCEPTION OF THE PROJECT Significance of the History The history of the Southern Pacific and the railroad companies connected with it affords one of the many examples in American economic life of a great industrial organization built up from small beginnings within the lifetime of one group of men. It is a story full of the interest which attaches to constructive achievement in any line. When we remember that as late as 1870 there was no railroad west of the Mississippi-Missouri River except the Northern, Union, Kansas, and Central Pacific railroads, which possessed a mileage as great as 300 miles, and when we recall that in 1860 the total railroad mileage of the states in this same territory amounted to only 6,000 miles, we are able to form some idea of the successful energy which created a system of 861 miles of railroad in the course of six and one-half years, across an unsettled country, in the face of obstacles due to climate, altitude, and distance from centers of traffic and of finance. The history of the Southern Pacific is significant, however, for still other reasons than because it illustrates what men can do in spite of serious difficulties. The company’s record is important to the student of transportation problems because there is embodied in it much of the experience of the Pacific Coast with respect to railroad construction, railroad finance, railroad rate-making, and the relation of railroad corporations to the public at large, as represented by local, state, and national governments. What the Pacific Coast, and what in particular the state of California know, first hand, of the habits and policies of railroad corporations, is mainly derived from contact with the Southern Pacific Railroad and its auxiliary companies. The narrative that follows is offered as a contribution from the far western portion of the United States which may help to explain the attitude of that section toward transportation matters; as well as an account of some phases of the earlier development of a railroad system which is now one of the most powerful in all the country, whether we compare this system with the railroads of the East or with those of the West.