There is no way of estimating the profits which Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker drew out of the Western Development, Pacific Improvement, and Southern Development companies. We know they were great, because the associates died very rich men. Mark Hopkins engaged in no important enterprise outside of his hardware business, except in railroad construction and operation, and yet in 1878 he left an estate appraised at over $19,000,000. Eleven years later, Charles Crocker’s estate was appraised at $24,142,475.84.[191] Stanford’s estate was not appraised in 1893, or at least no figures of value were made public, and Huntington did not die until long afterwards. Inasmuch as the associates up to 1878 were all interested in the same business together, and since the most important of their investments were in railroad construction work, it is fair to assume that the profits of the construction companies were considerable. Whatever they were it must, however, be remembered that they consisted in the main of Southern Pacific securities and of California real estate, neither of which were immediately salable. As a construction enterprise, the whole Southern Pacific affair was speculative. It was from the point of view of the owners of the Central Pacific alone that the construction of the Southern Pacific presented itself as a necessary policy, both for the protection of an existing investment, and for the full exploitation of the possibilities of monopoly in California.[192] CHAPTER VIII ORGANIZATION OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC-SOUTHERN PACIFIC SYSTEM, FROM 1870 TO 1893 Extent of System By 1877 the Central Pacific-Southern Pacific combination was in control of over 85 per cent of all the railroads in California, including all the lines of importance around San Francisco Bay, except the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad, and in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. Not only had the associates established the monopoly which they desired, but the operations of their system had reached an extent which they themselves would have thought inconceivable a few years before. The operated mileage of the Central Pacific-Southern Pacific line on June 30, 1877, was 2,337.66 miles, the capitalization $224,952,580, and the gross earnings $22,247,030. There was a continuous stretch of road from Ogden to Sacramento, San Francisco, and Oakland, and from these cities to Los Angeles and Yuma, by way of the San Joaquin Valley; while a line from Mojave to the Colorado River and The Needles was in course of construction.