Through their political influences they obtained franchises of priceless value, organized subsidiary street railway companies, and exchanged the stock of these subsidiary companies for that of the Metropolitan.A few illustrations will show the character of these transactions.They thus acquired, practically as a free gift, a franchise to build a cable railroad on Lexington Avenue.
At an extremely liberal estimate, this line cost perhaps $2,500,000 to construct, yet the syndicate turned this over to the Metropolitan for $10,000,000 of Metropolitan securities.They similarly acquired a franchise for a line on Columbus Avenue, spending perhaps $500,000 in construction, and handing the completed property over to the Metropolitan for $6,000,000.In exchange for these two properties, representing a real investment, it has been maintained, of $3,000,000, the inside syndicates received securities which had a face value of $16,000,000 and which, as will appear subsequently, had a market cash value of not far from $25,000,000.They purchased an old horse-car line on Fulton Street, a line whose assets consisted of one-third of a mile of tracks, ten little box cars, thirty horses, and an operating deficit of $40,000 a year.At auction, its visible assets might have brought $15,000; yet the syndicate turned this over to the Metropolitan for $1,000,000.They spent $50,000 in constructing and equipping a horse railroad on Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets and turned this over to the Metropolitan for $3,000,000.For two and a half miles of railroad on Thirty-fourth Street, which represented a cash expenditure of perhaps $100,000, they received $2,000,000 of Metropolitan stock.But it is hardly necessary to catalogue more instances; the plan of operations must now be fairly evident.It was for the members of the syndicate, as individuals, to collect all the properties and new franchises that were available and to transfer them to the Metropolitan at enormously inflated values.
So far, all these deals were purely stock transactions--no cash had yet changed hands.When the amalgamation was complete, the insiders found themselves in possession of large amounts of Metropolitan stock.Their scheme for transforming this paper into more tangible property forms the concluding chapter of this Metropolitan story.** In 1897 the Traction Company dissolved, after distributing $6,000,000 as "a voluntary dividend" among its stockholders.
Nearly all the properties actually purchased and transferred in the manner described above, had little earning capacity, and therefore little value; they were decrepit horse-car lines in unprofitable territory.The really valuable roads were those that traversed the great north and south thoroughfares-Lenox, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Avenues.Many old New York families and estates had held these properties for years and had collected large annual dividends from them.Naturally they had no desire to sell, yet their acquisition was essential to the monopoly which the Whitney-Ryan syndicate aspired to construct.
They finally leased all these roads, under agreements which guaranteed large annual rentals.In practically all these cases the Metropolitan, in order to secure physical possession, agreed to pay rentals that far exceeded the earning capacity of the road.What is the explanation of such insane finance? We do not have the precise facts in the matter of the New York railways;but similar operations in Chicago, which have been officially made public, shed the utmost light upon the situation.In order to get possession of a single road in Chicago, Widener and Elkins guaranteed a thirty-five per cent dividend; to get one Philadelphia line, they guaranteed 65 1/2 per cent on capital paid in.This, of course, was not business; the motives actuating the syndicate were purely speculative.In Chicago, Widener and Elkins quietly made large purchases of the stock in these roads before they leased them to the parent company.The exceedingly profitable lease naturally gave such stocks a high value, in case they preferred to sell; if they held them, they reaped huge rewards from the leases which they had themselves decreed.
Perhaps their most remarkable exploit was the lease of the West Division Railway Company of Chicago to the West Chicago Street Railroad.Widener and Elkins controlled the West Division Railway; their partner, Charles T.Yerkes, controlled the latter corporation.The negotiation of a lease, therefore, was a purely informal matter; the partners were merely dealing with one another; yet Widener and Elkins received a fee of $5,000,000 as personal compensation for negotiating this lease!
