"
To the four men who were the builders of the Central Pacific, the public
and particularly the state of California owes much. They not only built
the road, but made it a grand, complete success in all its departments.
Without it, California would still be a remote province, little known.
With it she is one of the chief states of the Union, and in the great
business world she is known and felt as a power.
Later the corporation became very wealthy and powerful. Then it was that
it began to abuse its power, working often against the best interests of
the inhabitants of the Pacific slope. In some cases, as in the eviction
of the people who were settlers in the Mussel Slough District, it was
guilty of extreme cruelty and injustice, such as is almost certain to
bring its own punishment. But in reckoning with the Southern Pacific,
for so the company is now called, the people of California should be
careful to look on both sides of the question, remembering the terrible
struggles of those early days, when the building of the Overland, that
greatest achievement America had ever seen, was to them like the
miraculous gift of some fairy godmother, seemingly beyond the
possibility of nature.
Pages:
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236