hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

598 RAILROADS—SOUTHERN PACIFIC SYSTEM.
Meantime the Southern company was negotiating, in
1868, for the purchase of the San Francisco and San
Jose railroad, which had been extended to Gilroy,
and had proposed to San Francisco to make a gift to
it of 3,000 shares, of $100 each, in the San Jose road,
which the city owned, worth at that time $120,000.
The city had taken this stock a few years previous in
exchange for $300,000 worth of city bonds sold by
the company for $195,000. Feeling that railroads
were essential to its prosperity, the city gave up its
stock, but upon condition that the San Jos6 railroad
should be purchased and made a part of the Southern
Pacific line to the southeastern boundary of
the state. In 1869 a proposition was made to the
supervisors of San Francisco to donate $1,000,000
in bonds of the city to the Southern Pacific, in
consideration of the construction of 200 miles of
road southward from Gilroy, the bonds to be delivered
upon the completion and stocking of each
fifty miles ; and such was the eagerness for communication
in that direction that the proposition was accepted
by a popular vote. In all some $4,000,000
was asked for from the southern counties to insure
the construction of the road to Los Angeles, but the
newspapers, except in San Francisco, objected to further
subsidies, and the legislature passed an act forbidding
the supervisors of any county to issue bonds
until at least five miles of any aided road should be
completed, and then only in such proportionate amount
as the distance constructed bore to the amount of aid
granted. As late as February 10, 1869, the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin asserted that the Southern
Pacific would in all probability locate its road through
all the coast counties as far as Los Angeles, and from
thence go to the Colorado river; and urged that "a
moderate amount of local assistance be given." It
was difficult, seeing the result to northern counties
of granting aid to railroad companies, to get the