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"The Big Four" was the name popularly given to the famous and influential businessmen, and railroad tycoons — also called robber barons — who funded the Central Pacific Railroad (C.P.R.R.), which formed the western portion through the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, built from the mid-continent at the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean during the middle and late 1860s.[1]
Composed of Leland Stanford (1824–1893), Collis Potter Huntington (1821–1900), Mark Hopkins Jr. (1813–1878), and Charles Crocker (1822–1888), the four themselves, however, personally preferred to be known as "The Associates."[2]
They enriched themselves using tax money and land grants, while heavily influencing the state legislature from within the Republican Party (Stanford was governor of California when the first of the Pacific Railroad Acts was passed.), and through monopolizing tactics. Contemporary critics claimed they were the greatest swindlers in U.S. history.[3][4][5][6]
- ^ Yenne, Bill (1985). The History of the Southern Pacific. Bison Books. pp. 10–11. ISBN 0-517-46084-X.
- ^ Galloway, John Debo, C.E. "The First Transcontinental Railroad" New York: Simmons-Boardman Co. (1950) Ch. 4
- ^ The Great Dutch Flat Swindle!: The City of San Francisco Demands Justice! ... an Address to the Board of Supervisors ... 1864.
- ^ Naugle, June (October 3, 2007). The Great American Swindle. Author House. ISBN 978-1-4520-5913-6.
- ^ Wolk, Roland De (November 5, 2019). American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-30547-2.
- ^ Folsom, Burton W. (January 1, 1991). The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America. Young Americas Foundation. ISBN 978-0-9630203-1-4.