The most hated railroad man in the country was Collis P. Huntington (1821–1900), the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad who dominated California's economy and politics. One textbook argues: "Huntington came to symbolize the greed and corruption of late-nineteenth-century business. Business rivals and political reformers accused him of every conceivable evil. Journalists and cartoonists made their reputations by pillorying him... Historians have cast Huntington as the state's most despicable villain." However Huntington defended himself: "The motives back of my actions have been honest ones and the results have redounded far more to the benefit of California than they have to my own."