The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California [Hardcover]

Richard Rayner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2007

A true-life tale of ruthless ambition, staggering greed, and the making of a nation.

One hundred forty years ago, four men rose from their position as middle-class merchants in Sacramento, California, to become the force behind the transcontinental railroad. In the course of doing so, they became wealthy beyond any measure––and to sustain their power, they lied, bribed, wheedled, and, when necessary, arranged for obstacles, both human and legal, to disappear. Their names were Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, and they were known as “The Big Four” or “The Associates.” Their drive for money––nothing more, nothing less––was epic. Their legacy is a university, public gardens, museums, mansions, banks, and libraries––and to a large degree California itself, a state that even today owes its aura of “can-do” and limitless possibilities to The Associates.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist and nonfiction author Rayner (The Devil's Wind) provides a first-rate look at the little-known story behind the creation of America's first continental railroad—the story of Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford, founder of the university that bears his name. The associates were unscrupulous, savvy profiteers, whose motives were driven solely by a lust for riches and whose success usually came at the expense of others. After usurping engineer Theodore Judah's campaign to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific, the foursome capitalized on anti-Chinese sentiment, hiring desperate Chinese to do hazardous work in inhumane conditions for substandard wages. They later sanctioned murder yet successfully painted themselves as philanthropists thanks to the journalists and historians in their pockets. Amid a story of greed and ruthlessness, Rayner offers a fascinating glimpse into the growth of the U.S., illustrating how these determined if ruthless men revolutionized transportation and greatly influenced the expansion of California. The author claims their business acumen defined the nature of the modern corporation, and their legacies live on in a library, a university, art galleries and museums. Entertaining and well written, Rayner's book will appeal to readers interested in history as well as business.
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Review

An astute, artful history ... the author regards his subjects with a mixture of awe and revulsion. (BusinessWeek ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton/Atlas & Company (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393059138
• ISBN-13: 978-0393059137
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific book on the railroads and California history, February 2, 2008

By 

Dave Smith "D. Smith" (los angeles, ca United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California (Hardcover)

This is a quick well-written and readable guide to the building of the railroads as it relates to California. It tells the story of the Big 4, aka The Associates - Hunitington, Stanford, Hopkins and Crocker - four merchants who came out of almost nowhere and ended up controlling the biggest railroad empire in America. In earlier books Rayner has written about con men and the shady sides of business and I was worried that he might approach the story from that angle. But he ends up liking them, warts and all, and his picture of the scheming Huntington is especially good. Another interesting thing that Rayner points out is how our thinking about the railroads these days is almost entirely the product of the changing ways in which they've been written about in different intellectual phases of history. He gives us a tour of the sources, from the muckraking days to more modern historians who take the "greed is good" argument. Rayner doesn't take sides especially. I also have to say that as a professor of U.S. history specializing in the period in question, I found nothing to object to within these pages; the previous reviewer's complaints have the sound of someone who was trawling for things to carp about; for example, his point regarding Throg's Neck: this is a body of water and an adjoining neighborhood in the Bronx, so there is no error here at all. If you are looking for a one-volume history of the railroads in the Golden State, this is a fresh and neat little book.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars a very frustrating book..., September 15, 2008

By 

Demetrios N. Kanakis (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California (Hardcover)

i was excited to buy the book and learn about the 'Big Four' of California. I really enjoy California history and have read many other books which touch on this subject. First disappointment of many was when I realized that instead of doing his research, the author said that a Chinese undertaker caused the crocker spite fence to go up when it was a German undertaker called Nicolas Yung. Obviously the name threw him off and the author merely assumed the ethnicity. Frustrating because the author got many other simple facts wrong and also frustrating because this is something that could have been easily researched. it kind of made me feel like the author was not really serious about writing this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Building of the Railroad, the Creation of a State, and the Invention of Big Business", August 8, 2008

By 

Thomas M. Loarie (Danville, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California (Hardcover)

I have lived in Northern California for forty years and knew the Big Four - Crocker, Hopkins, Huntington, and Hopkins - were instrumental in creating the transcontinental railroad and all became fabulously wealthy in the process. But like many who live here, I knew very little about the nature of their involvement and the true source of their wealth.

Since Silicon Valley was not around in the latter half of the 1800s, I knew their wealth creation story had to be different than what we see today. Author Richard Rayner in his "The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California" does a masterful job in chronicling the story of "the building of the railroad, the creation of a state, and the invention of big business" and how these four became "as fabulously wealthy as anybody in American history." This is a story of about bent laws, broken rivals, the bribery of government officials (local, state, and federal), and sanctioned murder.

Collis Huntington, the eventual ring-leader, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford all met while running successful retail and wholesale businesses in Sacramento. They were drawn into the idea of building a transcontinental railroad by Theodore Judah who was the visionary but desperately needed money. They provided the initial stake then assumed control after Judah, attempting to find capital to buy out his financial partners, died unexpectedly.

Rayner's well researched story then focuses on the building of the first transcontinental railroad - "a legendary story, a central part of the American West's creation myth"...a triumph of will, guts, the American can-do spirit, murder, fraud, and corruption "over unimaginable difficulty and danger"..."a race between the Irish navies of the Union Pacific, laying track from the east, and the Chinese coolies of the Central Pacific, advancing from the west...built by men who cared only about money and were absolutely ruthless about money"...a story of lust for money that propelled the railroad over the mountains, through the deserts, across the plains.

By the end of the Associates' run, "the railroads - the way they run and the power they had - were regarded as corrupt, cruel, implacable, and fiendish, in stark contrast to the gratitude and excitement with which they'd been greeted thirty years before."

This is a great read for anyone living in the Golden State, for those interested in the history of the "wild west," or anyone wanting to understand the birth of big business and the eventual demand for big government to control monopolists. Now when I visit Stanford University, the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, Grace Cathedral (Crocker), or the Mark Hopkins Hotel, I will be brought back to this book and what these landmarks represent in California's history.