words, if the lenders availed themselves of the option, as they subsequently did, securities to the nominal value of one million and forty thousand dollars were sold to them for seven hundred thousand dollars in cash. This must certainly be considered as a very advantageous bargain for the company; thirty per cent is a large profit, but it here represented a very unusual risk. Both of these loans received the unanimous sanction of the board of directors, and that to Groesbeck played a most important part in the subsequent struggle for the possession of the road.

With the money thus raised the enterprise was at last carried through, and, on the 15th of January, 1869, seventeen years after the organization of the company, the cities of Binghamton and Albany were brought into direct communication. Meanwhile those seventeen years of construction had greatly altered all the conditions of that railroad system of which the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad was now for the first time to become an integral part. In 1853 both the Erie and the Central were but feebly entering on their great careers. The Erie was just completed to Dunkirk; the Central was not yet consolidated; the whole receipts of the first were but one third part of what the completion of Mr. Ramsey's road found them, while, during the same interval, the receipts of the last had swollen from less than six millions per annum to considerably over fifteen. As for the men who managed the great trunk lines when Mr. Ramsey had completed his work, their names had never been mentioned in connection with railroads when he began it. In fact, the whole aspect of the problem had changed. In 1853 all the roads in the country were local roads; in 1869 no local road was suffered to exist, unless the great through roads were satisfied that it could serve no purpose in their hands; nay, more, unless they were also satisfied that it could serve no purpose in the hands of their competitors. When, therefore, the projectors of the Albany & Susquehanna line had completed it to Binghamton, they suddenly found themselves involved in all the complications and controversies of an intricate system. The intended local road was an element of strength or a source of danger not to be ignored by the managers of the great trunk lines.

Messrs. Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr. had at this time already succeeded in firmly establishing themselves in the practical ownership of the Erie Railway. Mr. Daniel Drew, some six months before, had been driven out of its treasurership, and even Commodore Vanderbilt had been compelled by fair means and by foul to abandon all idea of controlling its management. Of the two men now in possession of this great thoroughfare, of their personal character and of the means by which they procured and were prepared to perpetuate their power, it is unnecessary here to speak. Certain things may be assumed as matters of common notoriety. It is safe to say that the individuals just named, and the events in which they have been prominent during the last few years, have earned for them and for certain elements of our age and country a world-wide infamy which will for years render their formal introduction to readers of average information wholly unneces

When the Susquehanna Road was completed it became at once a most important element in the successful prosecution of the plans of Messrs. Gould and Fisk. It was so from two points of view, - either as regarded their competition with the Central Road for the carriage of the produce of the West to New England; or, still more important, as regarded their competition with other agencies for the carriage of coal to the same region. The anthracite coal deposits of America lie but a short distance to the south of the Erie Railway. Disappointed in the hope of successfully competing with the Central Road for the carriage of the produce of the West, convinced at last by hard experience that the more of this business the road undertook to do the more hopelessly bankrupt it became, the Erie managers had more and more turned their attention to the business of transporting coal. In this also they were subject to a very sharp competition, particularly from the wealthy companies which themselves owned the coal-beds, and which now proposed to supplement their business as colliers with that of carriers also. This by no means met the views of the Erie people. They were now entering into vast contracts with various coal companies to haul many hundreds of thousands of tons per annum; they naturally wished to extend their connection, as by doing so they accomplished two ends,

they shut the coal companies up in their mines, making them dependent on the Erie Railway for access to their markets, and at the same time they secured to themselves a monopoly in so far as the consumers were concerned; they, in fact, placed themselves as an indispensable medium between producer and consumer. The Albany & Susquehanna Road might well develop into an independent and competing line; hence they greatly coveted the possession of it. By it they would not only secure an access to Albany, but would forge the link which was to unite the Erie with a whole network of roads running north and east from Albany throughout coalconsuming New England.

It is wholly unnecessary to dwell upon the public considerations which rendered it unadvisable that the adventurers then representing the Erie Railway should be intrusted with a practical control over the winter supply of such an article as anthracite coal. However amiable or otherwise they might be in their domestic characters, their course had not been such as to make unprejudiced observers anxious to repose in them so delicate a duty as that of sole purveyors at any season of an article of prime necessity. The coal companies naturally did not look with any favor at a policy which threatened their lines of communication. Finally Mr. Ramsey, as the controlling influence in the Albany & Susquehanna management, neither desired to surrender the independence of his road, nor, in view of the recent experience of others, did he impose implicit faith in either the verbal or written assurances or obligations of the Erie representatives. Possession was with them considerably more than nine points of the law, and Mr. Ramsey evinced a marked repugnance to surrender the property intrusted to his charge into their possession, regardless of any liberal promises held out as to subsequent beneficial results, public and private, likely to ensue from his doing so.

The position of Mr. Ramsey in his own board of direction was not, however, perfectly secure. Certain enmities and jealousies had, little by little, not unnaturally grown up along the line of the road, and, at the election of directors in 1868, a ticket had been chosen partly in the opposition interest. What these parties represented when they came into the board

it is difficult to say; it may have been a restless feeling of discontent at the slow progress of the enterprise, or a vague desire for change; or, perhaps, a personal dislike and mistrust of Mr. Ramsey. Whatever the cause, the direction at the time of the completion of the road was divided not unevenly. This condition of affairs was very unsatisfactory to Mr. Ramsey. He maintained that at the previous election he and his friends had been taken by surprise; that no wish for a change in management really existed in the minds of the bulk of the stockholders; but, finally, whether it existed or not, he let it be distinctly understood that he did not intend to belong to a divided direction, and that at the coming election either he or his opponents were to go out. The materials for a lively contest for the control of the company in September, 1869, thus existed in great abundance and on all sides.

The road was completed in January, and early in June the Erie manipulators began their preparations to obtain possession of it, or, as they more graphically would have said, to "gobble" it. The stock of the road was nominally quoted at about twenty-five per cent of its par value; it was rarely bought or sold, and was supposed to possess little real value, except as representing the control of the enterprise. It was almost exclusively in the hands of three classes of owners, the directors and those dwelling along the line of the road, subscribing municipalities, and certain capitalists who held it as security for money advanced and expended in construction. The subscription books of the company had never been closed, as but two million eight hundred thousand dollars of the four million dollars of authorized capital had ever been subscribed, and of the amount of stock which had been subscribed for, eight hundred thousand dollars had been forfeited in the manner already mentioned. Whoever desired to get possession of the property had, therefore, to obtain the control for a longer or shorter period, to include the election day, of a majority of this stock. The Erie party wishing to come in, and the opposition minority determined not to go out, thus had natural affinities to each other. But though when united they controlled a formidable minority of the whole stock, yet it was by no means the majority, and the Ramsey party was now thoroughly alive to the

danger of the situation. The plan for the approaching campaign was soon matured. Under a sudden demand for election purposes the stock, which for years had been nominally quoted at twenty, rose rapidly in July to forty and fifty, and even to sixty and sixty-five per cent. All parties were buying. The issue was, however, to be decided by stock held by municipalities, and it was to the control of this that the greatest efforts were devoted. Here lay the stronghold of the Ramsey party; and here they felt secure, for the law authorized the town commissioners, who held this stock as trustees, to sell it only for cash and at its par value, and forbade them to sell it for less unless specially authorized to do so by a town vote. This was a point which it seemed hardly likely to touch. Suddenly, and to their great dismay, Mr. Ramsey and his friends heard of agents out among the towns offering the commissioners par for the stock, provided the offer was accepted at once. Naturally this was a great temptation to commissioners who represented towns which grievously felt the weight of railroad loans. These men were suddenly called upon to accept or reject, on their own responsibility, an offer which, a few days before, would have seemed incredible, but the acceptance of which, while it would relieve the town of debt, would also deprive it of all voice in the management of the road waited for so long. In a number of cases the commissioners considered it their duty to accept the offer, and the control of several hundred shares was in this way secured. The Ramsey party was thus forced into the field, and the stock of towns rose to a premium. This process, however, involved a very considerable outlay of money and no inconsiderable risk of loss. Buying up a majority of the stock was altogether too much like paying for a road. Why should that be obtained at great cost which could equally well be got for nothing? Stimulated by the passion which Mr. Fisk has happily described as an inherited disposition "to rescue things out of somebody else," one Sunday afternoon, early in August, a party of gentlemen met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York and arranged a new plan, involving the certain transfer of the road into their hands, but avoiding the necessity of further pecuniary outlay. A negotiation was successfully concluded for the purchase of four hun