Word: centralized
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Four of California (Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington), organizers of the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific and innumerable West Coast companies, seem the most arrogant, most shameless of them all. Last week their group portrait appeared in a 424-page book which combined careful reports of skulduggery with excellent characterizations...
Although Oscar Lewis calls his book The Big Four, his first chapters make it plain that five men were instrumental in organizing the Central Pacific. The extra name was that of Theodore Dehone Judah, known as Crazy Judah in his prime, who surveyed the route of the Central Pacific over the Sierra Nevadas, persuaded Crocker, Stanford, Hopkins and Huntington (then Sacramento merchants) to back him, battled for Federal support, broke with his partners, and died in 1863, at 37, as the road he had dreamed about for years was at last being built. For Crazy Judah-"studious, industrious, resourceful, opinionated...
Judah's shopkeeping partners had none of his vision. Under the terms of the Central Pacific's Government grant, the company got loans of from $16,000 to $48,000 per mile, depending on the nature of the territory through which the road passed. While it was still being built through the Sacramento Valley, Judah was asked by his partners to testify that it was in the foothills, so that the company would receive $16,000 more for each mile of track. Unwilling to be a party to this miracle of moving mountains, Judah resigned, died soon after...
Crocker. After the road was finished, each partner believed he had been principally responsible. But big, blunt, bearded Charley Crocker simply said, "I built the Central Pacific," and let it go at that...
Weighing 250 lb., a hard-driving man with unaccountable periods of complete inertia, Crocker was in charge of the actual construction of the Central Pacific, boasted that he found fault with everything and that everybody was afraid of him. But on payday he rode through the construction crews with 150 lb. of gold and silver, paid workmen himself. Because he admired the endurance of his Chinese cook, he favored Chinese crews over his partners' objections. When the Central Pacific was stopped by wild mountain country (during 1866 only 28 miles of track were laid), the rival Union Pacific...