>>8765694
Early California money input… $300M [internet … telegraph road] wonder what the intrnet input $'s are… ?
https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/railroad/phillips.html
The question comes up, what are the crimes of this corporation, about which there is so much noise? I answer, they are two: First, the men who have poured untold millions of dollars into the various lines of these roads want reasonable passenger and freight rates for persons and property transported, of which they claim to be the judges–or, in other words, while they are conferring benefits they want some profits. Second, that Stanford and his associates have grown rich. As to the first, the rates charged for passengers is about four cents per mile, on the average. For freights, the local charges are a shade higher than in Illinois, but not in disproportion to the general charges for other things in California. As to the second, I don't think that any decent, reasonable man in the United States will say that Stanford and his associates have made any more than they should. No one charges them with being dishonest. They are only charged with exacting exorbitant freight and passenger rates from the patrons of the road. People in California pay Wells, Fargo Co. and the Coast Line Stage Company never less than ten, and often twenty cents per mile, for passage in their stages, and I hear no complaints. They pay those rates cheerfully. But when the Central Pacific Railroad Company charges four or five cents a mile on their cars, there is a general outery among demagogues, politicians and rapacious members of the General Assembly. In my judgment, Gov. Stanford and his associates have added in fifteen years $300,000,000 to the permanent wealth of California, and have done already, and will do in the future, more for its permanent wealth and prosperity than all the pseudoreformers who have been or ever will be in the State.