berkeley. i'm a berkeley lad, very proud of it but stanford in high school right now, why is that? it is the incubator of silicon valley which has transformed and all of a sudden i realized i had my news hook. stanford university, we would not all be walking around with these things with changes in politics with business and culture and that is how it all began. >> the big four question is whether we had the railroad which is the nation's first real internet. >> it was. >> california needed more ways than one transforming the lifestyle of america making it more immediate to make products available and gave the impetus to a huge industrial agricultural revolution. and california as it is today. it was in california back then. when he started in his early life, where he and the rest of these people the transformed california came out of, that new york area. what is the story? >> that upper state new york was voluminous in the early 1800s and when you speak about that revolution from agricultural world, not just the united states into an industrial world there is no better avatar for us than stanford, born in 1824 the word tractor did not exist. the eureka now went right by the saloon where he was born and raised in the four years old and opened up shortly "after words". the first charter railroad, the second to offer it after the granite ran by this place as well and immense wealth came to the family because of that. stanford failed at almost everything and he was more or less forced to leave because he had either been expelled or dropped out of every school he went to. he did not have the equivalency of today's high school education so he left the wilderness of that area and went to a very small port just north of milwaukee. you might recognize, he did as opposed to what he said he had done before, he passed the bar, had apprenticed in albany and passed the bar. there is no reason to believe that, there is every reason to believe that was the first of his many lies. we call them lies. he went to wisconsin, did hook up with the waiter and work for him for 20 years and then finally passed the bar in wisconsin. he thought he was going off but a fire came through the town, decimated, burned his office of the grounds, his ious, he was once again at age 28 completely bereft. he had nothing but he did have brothers and he had brothers who had come out in 1849 and ended up in sacramento and started a shop called stanford brothers where they sold hardware and cigars and liquor and they said come on out and we will carry you so he came out and they put him to work with the branch store of stanford brothers up into nevada. this is where he begins to change. he starts to alter from a feckless young man into not only mentally wealthy but powerful and the story continues from that point. america then was on a huge quest. this is the generation that was born and bred in america, post jacksonian every man can make it, the birth of the latter day saints, shakers and other things. >> a year where he grew up. >> the great migration west, literally on the move and a huge transference of wealth and power towards the west. was he just writing away or was he leaving it? >> beginning just riding a wave in 1851 or so. the gold rush was behind but he becomes a leader and find a way to do that and one of the interesting stories we can talk about is opening that store in sierra nevada where he not only had stanford brothers franchise if you will but decided to go back to his roots and open up a solution which -- >> he is in the hotel business. they could drink there. it is called the empire saloon and then he had an idea, he realized that somebody told him the people in plaster county needed a justice of the peace and he had that law degree from wisconsin. he said i am qualified. people will add that piece of paper and guess where he made his courtroom? in the empire saloon, dispensing frontier justice one hand with the other. this is not just kind of funny and interesting but important. at this point leaving stanford, begins to understand that conflating power of the state with personal aggrandizement is a wonderful, strong alloy. this doesn't have anything to do with today, though, okay? i want to make that clear. this was an important lesson that plays out even more so in the following years. >> happenstance is a great part of history that no one likes to acknowledge. could have wound up at the bottom of the ocean or caught malaria or any number of things. his wife was following this equation. a number of things could have happened but the odds of him landing in sacramento with 3 other guys who were running stores and together they hatched what is considered the greatest swindle greatest achievement in american history out of sailing cigars in sacramento, an incredible part of the story. >> i would agree. >> i would like to know how these shopkeepers got this idea to build a railroad and get the federal government to pay for it. >> they will finance the whole darn thing and put a couple dimes of their own in. >> between the four of them they didn't have money or presence at the time. there was no time for industrialists to do it. what does it say about the age of these people who could do that. >> that says a great deal about america and the possibilities here and that is a celebration of our culture and heritage but let me move on and talk about these quick facts rather than my interpretation. he was up in the mountains, his brothers decided they have other entrepreneurial hopes and they go off to do other things, one goes to australia, older brother josiah starts the first patrolling company in california and they say to him can you go around the store when we are away and he says sure, he comes on down, he has brought his wife with him that he met in albany and mary when he was having difficult days in wisconsin so his wife is legal name is jean but he always different ways jenny so i did the same in the book. they are there. the stanford brothers store in sacramento happened to be around the corner from a very bullish, his word, man who sold carpets, named charles crocker. many of you will recognize that name. next door even more fortuitously is the hardware store owned by a fellow named mark hopkins and his partner huntington. these guys are not buffoons. these three guys are sharp and i will start with the word sharp. and it was a sharp trader. not to dig for gold. that wasn't the deal. if any of you have been on the bay, it is generational here. and he didn't care. and he needs boats, and and that was 3 times - he was bookish in the sense. and the part around the corner, crocker. and he looks like a politician. the name of somebody people that follow his. and and i hope everybody recognizes the name from the store. this guy has potential. there is this talk about more than just talk. very serious. and this was the time of the civil war. and with solace in history. the treasury of the nations around the world and wanted to tie that to the east coast. the federal government was beginning to talk about financing the transcontinental railroad. huntington, crocker, hopkins and stanford eventually began to realize that and they need a plan and they come up with them. >> and crocker is going them -- to the construction materials. their ledgers and financial stuff, huntington is going to be the sharp trader and someone has to buy rails and locomotives and spikes. and they need somebody to bring some power to be able to try to wrestle the money the federal government is talking about, financing this incredible new price, certainly the most expensive and ambitious public works project until that time and they look at stanford and say did you run success for da. are you interested in politics? they got him four more times, and the returning governor and they had a situation in 1861 where they had the first republican presidential -- lincoln, riding on his coattails. they were duking it out and splits the ballot. but because of the split ballot he comes up with no choice voting and he comes out barely on top so at age 37 he was elected governor of california. >> you have a governor in california who is probably man-made what? >> president of the central pacific railroad. >> that is how he gives that and there's a term of governor in a little bit. just as an aside when he was sworn in, california talking about climate change was actually in the midst of a flood that basically put everything underwater from reading down to -- >> the entire central valley, 50 inches of rain that winter. 50 inches. the normal is 20, 22. 50 inches of rain. it was literally flooded to the point where the telegraph poles, the tops of them were underwater. it was the entire sacramento, san joaquin, central valley was underwater, a total disaster. >> meantime we are heading towards civil war and also happens that lincoln in addition to being honest abe and all those things with the top railroad lawyer who made his career representing special interests of railroads so a sympathetic ear in washington but they had to get money out of washington so they sent a guy -- anybody ever ride the judo queue that is who it was named after, theater judo who was the perfect avatar if you will for a naÏve engineer who thinks he comes up with a great idea, completely gets crushed by scheming capitalists. and and and nobody can find a way to the amount the sierra nevada. >> wait -- why did they go there in the first place? >> i was going to get to that. king can't and wanted that to go out to asia. it is the problem with that. the mormon states were not going to give them up. so they put the kibosh on that. judah came out and found the northern route. he had this great idea and went to financiers in the city, the venture capital of the day and here's my great plan. i looked at it and they said that cost the equivalent of billions of dollars to determine that, 18, 20 or longer years. i'm getting 35% on my investments every day, thanks but no thanks. i was going to up there in sacramento was the leading town, the leading city in california. san francisco not so much. he goes to sacramento and get into a group of local business men and present the same plan and they are all doing the same thing. here is the big but, there is one guy in the back of the room staying in the back like he does back there. and he is very quiet and doesn't say anything and waits the crowd to disperse and walks to judah and says an interesting plane you have there. how would you like to meet me and my three partners and take a meeting with us. this was huntington. he said sure, he is desperate. may be the smartest and stupidest thing he ever did because we are going to outfox those four. that is a great idea. i know everybody in washington, go back to washington and see what you can do. he goes back to washington pretty quick. he becomes the lead staff, maybe the only one staff, for house committee and railroad and the senate committee on a railroad while working -- being a director on the board of directors and an engineer for the railroad. they were in such an area in congress they assign them and send the board to the president, 1862 it is a done deal. we will give them the equivalency of billions in bonds, it is a tax race. american taxpayers have to pay for financing of this railroad. and then get back to that later on. they are ready to go. the central pacific railroad company which would later become the southern pacific. >> the same part of the deal that gave ownership rights to miles on each side. >> it was 10 miles on either side of the right away. if you -- if you want to public schools in california like i did, in sixth grade it was a checkerboard. we would won't go into the details but they have a wide swath of land in 1864. it was 20 miles on each side. they have the right to use the coal and timber, anything you can find for the construction of the railroad, all the mineral rights for the land. they had mission bay later. it was a day in those days and the contract, these are the exact words from the contract, extinguishing all indian titles. >> that takes us back to leland as governor which is more than a railroad story. it is the darker side of california history that are largely forgotten. for example, the wars against the indians in california. can you talk about that? >> i would site the premier historian, stanford's gubernatorial rain, establish california's killing machine. there is no question about this, somewhere in the neighborhood in the neighborhood of 10,000 indian children were kidnapped, usually at gunpoint having killed the parents and put into slavery in california. they were slaves. indians had no rights in court which indians could not testify. indians could not vote, indians could not obtain citizenship. they had been here for 12,000 years mind you. >> it wasn't just indians. by today's standards, incredibly startling inauguration address. in your book i was wondering if you could read a little bit about that, considering today's climate versus then. >> immigration for those of us who were shocked about the language we hear today, nothing new. it was a horrible, racist trope here. leland stanford's inaugural address about the pariah immigrant of the day. to my mind it is clear that the settlement among the 7 inferior race is to be discouraged by every legitimate means. asia with her numberless millions sends to our shores the dregs of her population. large numbers of this class are already here and unless we do something early to check their immigration the question, which of the two tides of immigration meeting on shores of the pacific shall be turned back will be forced upon our consideration when far more difficult to dispose. there can be no doubt that the presence of numbers among us of a degraded and distinct people must exercise deleterious influence upon the superior race and to a certain extent repelled desirable immigration. sound familiar? >> at the same time no problem about employing them and bringing them into build the railroad. >> here's the rub. they've got the money, huntington is buying all the stuff. everybody is happy. stanford is going to all the counties, statewide for his railroad and start going to counties where he said to them go from the bonds or just -- the method up and down california. he does have the labor force. a lot of these are civil war veterans many of whom are irish, and opening, a quarter irish in the community and they were desperate. there was a group of hard-working immigrants that came from the wrong side of the pacific. they happened to be mostly from the canton region of china and a guy named stroh bridge along the short side and they eat funny things like dried fish and they don't speak english. they were desperate so they hired a bunch of them and gave up tough jobs and they could handle it with great efficiency, strength, reliability, soberness, so on and so forth, before the railroad is finished, as many as 20,000 people from china, they were the real john henrys of american railroad. >> the picture of the two when they came together or were they hustling things on the side? >> are you talking about laundry money? >> they turned it into detail. >> they made a fortune, built it for twice the price and pocketed half of it. >> they set up dummy corporations so what they do is take the bond money and filter it through companies, stanford more than the other three. ostentatious mansions, and the president of the railroad still standing and if you haven't i encourage you to go there. the second one on the little hill, not very far from here. later on he wanted a winery because this is what rich guys do so he not only put together a bunch of land and the largest vineyard in the world. for a real rich gentleman who is important like me i need a little chÂteau, so san francisco gets a little cold once in a while. a little place 30 miles down the peninsula called mayfield. it was a drunken stagecoach with 20 saloons in the place. it was marked by the redwood tree. but 8000 plus acres. >> he had a son, what he and jenny wanted the most. >> he had a son, leland stanford junior and a fair amount. he was born after - tried to have a child for 18 years so you can imagine after 18 years and you have a son how important that was to him. i have to say this in stanford's defense he was a family man. he was devoted to his wife and his son and grooming him to take over the business. there was nobody after him and they took him on the grand tour of europe, he was going to enter harvard in the fall but after they came out of constantinople, he got typhoid at age 15. >> in his memory they decided to build what was that a university. >> in a trade school. jenny, the same thing, disdained the liberal arts. he had all these guys who graduated, working for him on a streetcar line. >> charlie is going up and going to trade school and this becomes important because it is the root of stanford university that leads to guys like truman and who is that guy? hewlett and packard and those guys. and so on and so forth. and they found a university and he dies and he has been spending like crazy. >> leland stanford junior university, a memorial to him, leading up plush life, not taking care of himself, dies at age 69 in palo alto. >> she take on the task of salvaging it and create stanford university but the people -- the history gets a little sparse. she died in honolulu. let me push this a little bit because she's the hair one of the story. she never got her hairdo. she is the widow of a great and grand man, never had any formal education, no training in business, and suddenly it turns out his estate is this close to bankruptcy because he has been borrowing like crazy and taking over larger corporations out of the railroad and the university will shutdown. couldn't even pay the heating bill. she rescues the university, rescues the university, put it all together and get an incredible work out of her attorneys, a small instance of this for those who pay taxes in california. you might be interested in this, stanford university was the only place, this happened in 1905, got in the state constitutional exemption from ever having to pay property tax. maybe some of you saw the story and mercury earlier this week, remains the largest landholder in the valley. she gets her work done and takes some relief. she has a little glass of water. i won't spit it out like she did. it tasted very funny and brought it to a chemist and it was dosed with stricken i. her attorneys, her entourage, somebody is trying to kill you. i love honolulu, she gets on a ship and goes to honolulu. maybe some of you know this, waikiki beach, a beautiful place. when she's there, she has had a lovely day taking a nice ride, she comes back and people walk out on the wharf to a beach, she goes to bed, she is screaming in the hallway, barging into a room, i have been poisoned. two hours later she is dead. there was a very serious inquest into this. they have the best physicians you could find. they have detectives, they had an inquisition that lasted for weeks, very detailed autopsy, everybody agreed on one thing and i won't tell you what that is yet. >> we will open it up for questions. a good mystery, you have to read the book to find out. >> it is your show. i am a guest. >> time is up and it is time for questions so start passing the microphone around as we leave with that. >> question over here coming your way. >> thank you. how did stanford react to the kansas nebraska act of 1854 and the dred scott decision of 1857? >> those were bunch of acts that took place around the same time which is essentially the lesson of all these congressional acts was the pole that continued to expand slavery, part of that in play was california, they wanted to have california as a slave state particularly with the goal that was rushing in at the time. this was one of the main reasons, the primary reason the civil war took place, people like calhoun said if you make california a free state when you rush it into state status on september 9, 1850, we are going to secede. they did rush statehood and they did secede and it had a tremendous effect not only on the nation and the state but stanford was vehemently because he was a republican anti-slavery. >> question? microphone over there. >> thank you. what i understood from the background at stanford, it was jane who picked up the idea, what you said about trade school, the university and a coed institution which was quite unusual at the time. can you say any more about what her role was after he died before and i didn't know about? >> jenny was verily opposed to have any girls at the school, she opposed it 100%. that university was a memorial to her dead son and it was for her boys. she always called her boys. there would be no girls. leland said you have to have some females. can't make it boy school for a variety of reasons. at the school, blue it out of the water. there would always be tuition free for every california. somebody could check and see but also got the tax break and got the tax break on top of that. >> we are getting a free university out of this, >> in 1920 them got to have tuition. and if he did not win doubt his -- coming up in the next segment. she was poisoned. the coroner's inquest unanimously and emphatically declared that she had been murdered. this really upset stanford university's first fabled president david stark jordan who is trying to keep the place afloat with scotch tape and glue. he was having an awful lot of trouble. he immediately sailed to hawaii. this is dealt with, pretty comprehensively in the book. in american history and probably never know. that is part of the mystery. if anybody reads this. and please contact me. >> question right here. >> thanks. there was a supreme court precedent that made corporations people and from southern pacific, do you know anything about that? not even justices. >> not a legal scholar. i can't speak authoritatively but there's a legal debate unless we tried to get to the bottom of that but i was in over my head after three months. having asked my lawyer friends, professors at hastings, i didn't call anybody -- it was probably my mistake but in any event there is a huge legal debate and many people who strongly believe that part of the whole, the president was set because of stephen field, and appointee to the supreme court, stanford was completely responsible that characterized corporations as people and exempt them from the liabilities the one might assume they should shoulder. >> the railroad had a governor and a senator. when he was senator he was instrumental, getting to the supreme court. >> did good work. >> did that help them not repay the debt they had? >> the united states government sued jenny and said you have to give back the money we love you because your dead husband kept saying we will not pay you back. you owe us when we did you a huge favor and you signed a contract and pay back with interest. you are crazy, they launched an investigation. there were attempts from california but stanford literally bought off the regulators by giving them land, millions of dollars and they paid no attention. the federal government launches "in depth" examination coast-to-coast about the railroads and where the money went to. you get to san francisco and leland stanford and this is thousands of pages of transcripts. i will boil this down to a couple hundred orders. he liked to be called governor regardless of he was senator. he forgot he was a senator who shows up in a transcript which is kind of funny. once you hold public office, are you a senator? i had forgotten. governor, we would like to see the books, with all the money we gave you and you are supposed to pay back and the president of the railroad, the senator says what books would you be referring to? the accounting books. mister hopkins, he died, sorry. what about the people who replaced him. he is dead too. somebody must have the books. i have never seen the books. you have never seen the books? i will tell you what happened, they had burned the books, they destroyed them. so the commission was so upset stanford refused to answer questions. i don't think he used the term witchhunt but he said things like that and you are not treating them with dignity i deserve and i'm not going to ask your questions. on advice of counsel i will not answer your questions. they took him to court, to a federal court, a 3 panel federal court, two of these guys were his appointees, guess what they ruled? >> question in the back. >> i am curious about the research you did for this book. what you looked at had been neglected or unknown in the past and where did you find the various material you use to research it. i looked at the scanned biographies which are more hagiography's and went beyond that in 20 his primary papers and primary sources. it is a special collection, a collection of primary materials. historians have been handicapped by one major point. jenny destroyed all his correspondence that she had shortly after he died. however, i did find, this was a lucky break for me, that there were 500 letters he had written to huntington that were and are in the rare books collection at syracuse university in new york. that was a valuable thing for me as opposed to 100 in the library. huntington the the nephew of collis huntington. a great amount of research was done at the california historical society, bancroft library at berkeleyas wonderful stuff including dictated memoirs of stanford's older brother, crocker, huntington's memoirs are great, so on and so forth. it was fairly expensive and i went to wisconsin and new york and honolulu. it was 41/2 years of that sort of thing. >> at the time, given what they did, what they accomplish and what they grabbed for themselves in the process which went on for generation, the land grabs and subsequently how they had other railroads going east and took over and gave birth to the octopus which put a stranglehold on a lot of american agriculture and commerce. was the railroad a great robbery or a great benefit? >> this is a great historical debate. there are people who feel it is the greatest thing since wide spam and great scholars like richard white at stanford university who wrote a tremendous record, anyone with a serious interest in railroad history call railroaded was argued, scholars such as vogel that it was completely unnecessary, for so long that it was meaningl
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