GEORGE A. GONZALEZ - fieldi

AUTOMOBILE EMISSION STANDARDS 71extensive speculations, including rancho subdivision, and in citrus fruitgrowing and marketing. Brothers Joseph P. and Robert Maclay Widney wereeffective local lobbyists for the Southern Pacific and for harbor improvements,and the latter helped organize the city’s initial transit line. TheOhio-born Widneys, nephews of state senator Charles Maclay, another realtor,were respectively a Los Angeles district court judge and president of theLos Angeles County Medical Association, and both helped form the chamberof commerce.Jaher concludes by pointing out that “the Lankersheim-Van Nuys and Flint-Bixby connections also conducted vast real estate operations” in the LosAngeles area (595).In an effort to increase access to commerce and attract capital to thearea, “several merchants and landowners organized a Committee of Thirtyin May 1872” and charged it with inquiring whether the Southern Pacificrailroad “could be induced to route its trunk line through Los Angeles”(Fogelson 1967, 52 [emphasis in original]). The Southern Pacific, the leadingrailroad in the state, agreed to run 50 miles of its “main track” in LosAngeles County if the county government agreed to cover “5 percent of itsassessed value,” which amounted to $610,000 (Fogelson 1967, 53 [emphasisin original]). 2In light of the railroad’s offer, Fogelson (1967), in a history of early LosAngeles, explains that William Hyde, a representative of the SouthernPacific in Los Angeles and of the aforementioned Committee of Thirty, “persuadedthe county Board of Supervisors to place before the voters a propositiongranting $610,000 to the Southern Pacific for fifty miles of trunk line.”Fogelson points out that “at first the bond issue encountered widespread hostility.”Apparently, “disillusionment with the railroads was so pervasive in LosAngeles that in the last election each candidate had forthrightly declared hisantipathy to rail subsidies.” He adds that “several ranchers from southern LosAngeles County, who feared that the donation would increase their taxes,channeled this general dissatisfaction into effective opposition” (53).“Standing against them,” however, “and in favor of the proposition wereLos Angeles merchants and landowners who considered a [railroad] connectionworth any cost and the Southern Pacific offer their only opportunity”(53). Leading among this pro–Southern Pacific group was Robert M. Widney,“a prominent lawyer and landowner,” who published an “influential” pamphlet,entitled “Los Angeles County Subsidy,” circulated just prior to the voteon the subsidy (Fogelson 1967, 55). Widney’s (1956 [1872]) central point inthis pamphlet was that the Southern Pacific proposed connection to the citywould greatly increase Los Angeles’s trade and population by making it the“second railroad center on the [Pacific] Coast” (358). The specific advantageof having the Southern Pacific run its main line to Los Angeles is that it