Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/167

Rh political or personal or what not, which inspired it. Fortunately, just now it makes no difference.

The hardest feature of the matter lay in the attitude of those jointly interested in the ownership of the Southern Pacific System. These men declined to give any assistance in the struggle for justice and for the endowment of the university. All were financially concerned in the final outcome, but they left her to make the fight alone and at her own cost.

It should be said that none of the present owners or managers of the Southern Pacific were in any way concerned in this matter. It is also fair to say that this attitude was only the business man's point of view. It seemed impossible to save the estate and the university together. All receipts of the railroads (there were no profits) were needed to continue its operations, and the outlays of the university seemed to tho other owners of the railway system to involve a dangerous policy. On the other hand, to Mrs. Stanford the estate existed solely for the benefit of the university. To save the estate on these terms was to her like throwing over the passengers to lighten the ship. And as matters turned out, the university, the estate and the railway were all saved alike.

Perhaps we can get at the nature of this suit from a couple of letters written at the time. I find on our files a letter sent in November, 1894, to President Eliot of Harvard. In this letter I said:

I recognize of course that public sentiment can not be formed without a basis of knowledge. The peculiar conditions in which this university finds itself are not easily stated to the public. There are internal reasons why we can not well take the country into confidence. Some of these reasons are connected with the relations of the Stanford heirs. Others arise from our relations to our future partner, in whose power we are, until the government suit is disposed of, that is, until the settlement of the estate.

The grounds of the government suit, in brief, are these. The Central Pacific Railroad was regarded as an impossibility by most of the people of California. Its builders exhausted their funds and their credit and tried in vain to get help from every quarter, even after receiving large donations of land then worthless. The U. S. government came to their aid, whether wisely or not. . . . it does not matter at present. The road when finished bore a first mortgage, covering all that it is now worth. The government took a second mortgage upon it as security for the payment of the debt due for the bonds it had advanced in aid of the corporation. . ..

There is a law in California, by which the original stockholders in a corporation are personally liable for its debts, if suit be begun within three years after the organization of the corporation. This law was intended to check "wild-cat" speculations.

It is claimed that under this law the estates of Stanford and Huntington are still liable for the amount of the second mortgage, to come due in a few years. It is claimed that the three-years' limitation does not hold against the government. This question of liability had not been raised when the estates of the two remaining partners were distributed, and its enforcement would be possible as against the Stanford estate alone, as Mr. Huntington, being alive,