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 con netted 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. 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.

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.

Based on previously unseen data, The Passenger Train in the Motor Age offers an illuminating portrait of a critical time in railroad history.

Outspoken and controversial, Stephen Field served on the Supreme Court from his appointment by Lincoln in 1863 through the closing years of the century. No justice had ever served longer on the Court, and few were as determined to use the Court to lead the nation into a new and exciting era. Paul Kens shows how Field ascended to such prominence, what influenced his legal thought and court opinions, and why both are still very relevant today. One of the famous gold rush forty-niners, Field was a founder of Marysville, California, a state legislator, and state supreme court justice. His decisions from the state bench and later from the federal circuit court often placed him in the middle of tense conflicts over the distribution of the land and mineral wealth of the new state. Kens illuminates how Field's experiences in early California influenced his jurisprudence and produced a theory of liberty that reflected both the ideals of his Jacksonian youth and the teachings of laissez-faire economics. During the time that Field served on the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation went through the Civil War and Reconstruction and moved from an agrarian to an industrial economy in which big business dominated. Fear of concentrated wealth caused many reformers of the time to look to government as an ally in the preservation of their liberty. In the volatile debates over government regulation of business, Field became a leading advocate of substantive due process and liberty of contract, legal doctrines that enabled the Court to veto state economic legislation and heavily influenced constitutional law well into the twentieth century. In the effort to curb what he viewed as the excessive power of government, Field tended to side with business and frequently came into conflict with reformers of his era. Gracefully written and filled with sharp insights, Kens' study sheds new light on Field's role in helping the Court define the nature of liberty and determine the extent of constitutional protection of property. By focusing on the political, economic, and social struggles of his time, it explains Field's jurisprudence in terms of conflicting views of liberty and individualism. It firmly establishes Field as a persuasive spokesman for one side of that conflict and as a prototype for the modern activist judge, while providing an important new view of capitalist expansion and social change in Gilded Age America.

Don Hofsommer chronicles the twentieth-century history of a transportation giant. Here is a story of divestiture and merger, Sunset Route, and Prosperity Special. " . . . a treasure house of information about the Southern Pacific Company . . . . This book is a joy to read."--Richard C. Overton, from the Foreword