Leland Stanford is held up as a paragon of virtue these days. The university he claimed to have established as a tribute to his son has turned the historic figure into a legend who probably has higher approval ratings than even the most popular figures today. Mr. Stanford would probably be pleased by this; it is what he had planned after all.
Leland Stanford's contemporaries didn't view him with the same reverence his name conjures up today; in fact, they most likely viewed him with the same scorn that Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff and Michael Milkin receive today. Many Americans quickly turned against the men who declared themselves the builders of the railroad and Leland Stanford was at the top of that list.
The owners of the railroad got extremely excessive incentives from the U.S. Government to build it and extorted even more from the local cities the railroad would pass through. If an existing city balked at paying what Stanford and his cronies demanded, it was common for the railroad to establish a 'spite town' nearby that could ruin the existing town. Farmers were steamed by a provision the railroads got written into law that exonerated the railroads from any damages they might cause. As a result, the train engineers were instructed to barrel through any obstacle, including livestock.
When the railroads had problems getting American employees who were willing to tackle the tough work of clearing mountains and laying track, they initially turned to Mexican workers, but Stanford and his partners were loathe to pay them the same amount they would have paid "White" workers. This was required due to the recently signed Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. So they turned to China, importing thousands of workers. Publicly, Stanford scapegoated the Chinese, making racist statements while his businesses profited off their work.
As he got older, Stanford wanted to burnish his image. He began to see that he could possibly reshape public opinion for the ages; and what would be better than establishing a university? Future generations, far removed from the scandals, negative opinions and bad publicity that dogged him in life might focus more on his legacy of founding a university. Amazingly, it worked. Could Leland Stanford's success be an example for the Madoffs, Lays and Jeffrey Skillings of today? The permanence of media these days might make that impossible.
