Wedge

Long has California been considered the domain of Southern Pacific Railway Co. But a year ago, over the many protests of the S. P., an invasion of the domain was approved by the I. C. C. Last week, through the redwooded Oregon-California border near Klamath Falls, where Herbert Hoover likes to fish, there was driven the first wedge of the invasion. A track-laying machine flaunting a "California Here We Come" banner noisily jerked its way toward and across the State line.

No slight wedge was this. Behind it to the North was the combined force of the $878,626,000-in-assets Great Northern and the $868,915,000 Northern Pacific. Awaiting it in the South was the $110,111,000 Western Pacific, pet road of Arthur Curtiss James. When by the first of next year the track-laying crews have finished their work, 200 miles of new rails will connect Klamath Falls and Bieber, Calif., will link the Northern transcontinental routes with Western Pacific. The track will feed new traffic to both systems, will also bring competition to Southern Pacific's land and sea routes. And it will bring a smile to the ghost of James Jerome Hill who, never satisfied with merely pushing to the Coast, always hoped some day he could drive his steel into California, tap San Francisco and the fertile valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin.

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