|
Walking around San Francisco, you get all this history of the region. When on Nob Hill you see the old mansions that are now hotels. One of the restaurants up there is called "The Big Four" after four famous industrialists. Who were they, and what did they do? |
|
The Big Four was the name popularly given to the chief entrepreneurs in the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States.1 However, the four of them preferred to be known as "The Associates".
2
This is little liberal me saying it, but they have a bit of an insidious history. If you were to envision the fat-cat evil business men who swindled and tricked all the lowly farmers from their land and homes, this would be them. They gained all their land through "eminent domain" for the railroads (that some were never built) and then "pocketed" the rest. Stanford University is a good example of just a fraction of the acreage that was seized and claimed as private. Smart business men they were.
(24 Feb '10, 07:10)
4grim
2
Let's also not forget that they were not only unscrupulous businessmen, they were also ardently anti-labor. They regularly broke unions and abused workers. In July, 1877, Dennis Kearney, an Irish immigrant and rabble rouser, led his Workingmen's Association to the top of Nob Hill where he promised to tear the Crocker Spite Fence by November if it weren't gone sooner. Kearney opposed Crocker as much because the Pacific Mail (also controlled by Crocker) used Chinese labor, "depriving" waterfront jobs to his own kind of immigrants.
(24 Feb '10, 16:13)
Mr. W ♦♦
|
|
Stanford University's land never was part of a railroad land-grab, as 4grim suggests above. See Stanford's history, which begins: "In 1876, former California Governor Leland Stanford purchased 650 acres of Rancho San Francisquito for a country home and began the development of his famous Palo Alto Stock Farm. He later bought adjoining properties totaling more than 8,000 acres. The little town that was beginning to emerge near the land took the name Palo Alto (tall tree) after a giant California redwood on the bank of San Francisquito Creek. The tree itself is still there and would later become the university's symbol and centerpiece of its official seal." |
such a good question. it's been a while since i've seen this