Charles Crocker, the Big Four, and the Race for Riches

In 1861, four Sacramento store owners—Collis P. Huntington and his partner Mark Hopkins (hardware), Leland Stanford (groceries), and Charles Crocker (dry goods)—created the Central Pacific Railroad of California. A year later, Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act authorizing a transcontinental railroad and granting right of way to the Union Pacific to build west from Omaha and the Central Pacific to build east from Sacramento. The government provided both companies with a lavish package of loans, bonds, cash payments, and massive grants of public land. Obscure California storekeepers had secured one of the biggest government contracts in history. In time, they would take at least $200 million from the enterprise, in today’s dollars, billions.

“None of us knew anything about railroad building,” Crocker admitted, “but at the same time [we] were enterprising men.” The Big Four, as they became known, quickly settled into their respective roles. Stanford would manage relationships with the state of California, Huntington would take care of lobbying in Washington, Hopkins would keep the books, and Charles Crocker would supervise construction.

Crocker, who was born in Troy, New York, in 1822, came west with the forty-niners. Prospecting had gained him nothing, but with railroads, the energetic, red-faced 250-pound man knew he was on to something. As construction chief of the Central Pacific, Crocker’s first problem was a labor shortage. While the Union Pacific employed Irish immigrants, Crocker turned instead to Chinese emigrant workers. Some ten thousand Chinese pushed the Central Pacific across, and sometimes through, the Sierra Nevada, chiseling railroad tunnels through solid granite by hand. Crocker paid his workers barely a dollar a day. (In contrast, the Irish got three.) When the Chinese went on strike for a few more pennies, Crocker cut off their supply of food and observed that “they really began to suffer.” The strike quickly collapsed. Once the crews were on the other side of the mountains, the cry became “a mile a day!” Construction subsidies depended on miles of track laid, and Crocker pushed his men hard. On May 10, 1869, after some six years, the two railroads met at Promontory Summit, Utah.

Years later, Crocker declared, “We built that road for the profits we could make in building it.” Uninterested in moving people and goods, the Big Four were instead experts at lining their own pockets, and their deception knew few limits. They organized a sham construction company, Charles Crocker & Company, and paid construction costs from government funds to themselves. A suit against the Central Pacific charged that of the $240 million the company received in government subsidies, only $19 million was actually spent on construction. We will never know whether the accusation was accurate because Huntington burned the Central Pacific’s books on the eve of a congressional investigation. The Big Four forged maps and surveys, tricked inspectors, and laid miles of bad track. They bought newspapermen, created phony stockholders, and lied to banks when they borrowed. They bullied ranchers off their lands and may have even condoned murder. The business of bribing politicians was never-ending. Huntington spent five years in Washington, D.C., carrying a leather satchel crammed with cash on his rounds. “There are more hungry men in Congress this session than I have ever known before,” he once complained. While working furiously to get rich, the Big Four also built a railroad.

Late in his career, Crocker mused: “One man works hard all his life and ends up a pauper. Another man, no smarter, makes twenty million dollars. Luck has a hell of a lot to do with it.” Luck no doubt played a part, but ruthless disregard for the law, cruel exploitation of labor, and unremitting greed were also significant. One rival described Crocker as “a living, breathing, waddling monument of the triumph of vulgarity, viciousness and dishonesty.” Crocker did not see himself like that, of course. Questioned later about the fraud and corruption, he replied, “I knew nothing about that. I was building the road.” By the time Crocker died in 1888, with a fortune estimated at $40 million, he had turned to philanthropy, endowing art galleries, museums, and cathedrals that can still be seen in San Francisco today.

Building the Iron Horse—the transcontinental railroad—was one of the greatest triumphs of the Gilded Age. Railroads remade America on a massive scale and defined modern capitalism in the Gilded Age. But the country paid a heavy price. It was, after all, the people’s money that was stolen and the people’s government and political system that were corrupted and polluted. We still don’t know all of the costs. We don’t know, for example, how many Chinese workers died making the Central Pacific, although one estimate is 1,500. Moreover, building railroads just to make a profit from government aid eventually brought about national economic ruin. Overbuilding produced a railroad bubble, which burst in 1873 with devastating consequences. The Big Four, however, not only survived the depression but gobbled up most of the track in California. Until their deaths, they continued to pioneer new ways to put government money into the pockets of private business.

Questions for Analysis

Analyze the Evidence: Since none of the Big Four went to jail, what is the evidence for concluding that they were crooks?

Recognize Viewpoints: How do you suppose the Big Four would have defended themselves? What arguments could they use to explain their actions?

Consider the Context: How did the behavior of the Big Four compare with the values and behavior of other business titans in the Gilded Age? How did these men reflect the larger cultural and political trends of the period?