It does not, however, appear that these various factors stirred the people of Sacramento to any extraordinary enthusiasm over Judah’s scheme, or that they regarded him in any other light than that of an engineer with a risky plan, which it was very desirable to have someone other than themselves finance. Judah, however, called a meeting at a local hotel, and people came. He told them he had made twenty-three barometrical reconnaissances over the Sierras, and had found a line. He needed money to carry the project further, in particular to make a thorough instrumental survey, and he asked them what they would subscribe. Nobody subscribed very much. Huntington says that some gave a barrel of flour, and some a sack of potatoes. Still, the additional subscriptions necessary to the legal organization of Judah’s company probably amounted to as much as $56,500[10] on the 115 miles of line contemplated, and small miscellaneous offerings were not likely to carry the promoter very far. Collis P. Huntington It is at this juncture that we first hear the names of Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, all prosperous business men in Sacramento. Huntington and Hopkins ran one of the largest hardware stores in the town. Stanford and Crocker were merchants, and in addition, Stanford had dabbled in California politics to the extent of becoming a candidate for the position of state treasurer in 1857 and for that of governor in 1859, getting badly beaten on both occasions. It is difficult, even at this late date, to estimate the qualities of the four men with confidence. Beyond question, Huntington had the greatest genius for business of the four. Born in Connecticut, and self-supporting from the age of fourteen, he was a trader _par excellence_. In his youth he peddled watch findings from New York to the Missouri River. Later, it is related of him that he started for California with a capital of $1,200, which he increased to $4,000 during an enforced stay of three months on the Isthmus of Panama. He was cool, calculating, unscrupulous, a tireless worker, and a man with few interests outside of work. Enterprise for the public good interested him little. He had few friends, and some of these he lost in later years. Narrow in his sympathies, vindictive, sometimes untruthful, sarcastic, and domineering, he gained his success through the keenness of his mind and the energy and persistence of his character, and also through qualities of courage and imagination which were not absent from his business plans. [Illustration: Sketch of train on the Sacramento Valley Railroad, 1860] Leland Stanford