Excerpt from Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific So far as the author knows there is no published study which discusses in detail the important business problems connected with the history of the Southern Pacific Railroad lines. Most of the books which contain references to the Southern Pacific or to the Central Pacific limit themselves to a few chapters upon the romantic aspects of their construction. The few works which treat of the later period confine themselves chiefly to particular episodes in Southern Pacific history, often with the deliberate attempt to discredit the railroad company. The truth is that most writers upon the Southern Pacific have relied upon the reports of the United States Pacific Railway Commission or on Bancroft's "History of California," and very few have done original work from source material. Yet the usable material dealing with the subject of Pacific railroads is abundant. The Southern Pacific has left a broad trail in California. The record of its doings is to be found in court reports; in state, city, and federal records; in the public testimony, or still better, in the private letters of owners or managers of company enterprises; in the reports of the company itself and of its engineers or other representatives; in pamphlets without number; in files of newspapers. It is true that much of the data is partisan and unreliable as to details. Yet a partisan statement is serviceable if one knows it to be partisan, and, if one has reliable information with which to check the unreliable, the extent of partisan exaggeration in a given case becomes itself a fact of no insignificant importance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.