With this much of preliminary, we return to Stanford, to see just what this super-plutocratic board of trustees has done. To begin with, let me explain that the holding concern devised by the “Big Four” plunderers of the Central-Southern Pacific, for the purpose of skimming off the cream of the profits, was known as the Pacific Improvement Company. The affairs of this concern have been kept a dark secret; the holdings of Stanford in Pacific Improvement stock were not made over to the Stanford trust by Mrs. Stanford, but were placed in the hands of Judge Crothers, a trustee, and by him turned over to the Stanford trust after Mrs. Stanford died. In the last annual report of the treasurer of the university, I find the value of this holding listed at one hundred dollars for twenty-five hundred shares, with “dividends from earnings” for the year of $2,482.44, and “liquidation dividends” of two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. That is a pretty good earning capacity for a hundred dollars’ worth of stock, you must admit! You see how the big insiders operate—no one knows what this stock is really worth. In his letter to me Trustee Crothers admits that “there were a number of reasons why Mrs. Stanford did not wish the whole world, nor even all of the trustees of the university to know the terms ... of the Pacific Improvement trust.” No probate courts, or inheritance tax appraisers, or other unfriendly investigators were ever to have a chance to stick their noses into Pacific Improvement!