The New York and New England Railroad by Gregg M Turner

Author:Gregg M Turner [Turner, Gregg M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781662423611
Google: tbEfzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Page Publishing, Incorporated
Published: 2020-12-16T00:46:47+00:00

John S. Eldridge

The same year the Berdell mortgage was executed, President Bartholomew of the B, H, and E was succeeded by John S. Eldridge, of Canton, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Eldridge had previously been associated with the Grand Junction Railroad in Boston as well as the Sullivan County and the Vermont Central railroads. “He was a financier,” notes one historian, “that was bred in the school of State Street, Boston, and his subsequent career in Erie Railroad affairs proved that the State Street school of finance was one not far behind that of Wall Street in the teachings of methods that kept always in view the best way of caring for No. 1, no matter what the consequences might be to the other person.”113

In June 1867, the Erie’s executive committee considered a request from Eldridge and his board. In brief, they asked the Erie ringleaders if their firm would guarantee the payment of interest on $6,000,000 of the Berdell mortgage bonds. If so, the B, H, and E would promise to set aside each year a certain amount of its receipts from coal traffic to secure the guarantee. (Naturally, none of this could materialize until the railroad was entirely built and opened.) “General Diven then offered a resolution to do such, but to guaranty the interest on just $4,000,000 of the Berdell bonds. After several amendments were added, the resolution passed and an agreement was signed by the parties in October.”114

At this interval, a few facts from the 1867 annual report of the B, H, and E seem appropriate. The company was then operating 245 miles of railroad. It possessed just twelve locomotives, twelve passenger cars, and sixty mercantile cars as rolling stock. There were no less than ten mortgages upon the road or its franchises. Its funded and floating debt amounted to $10,326,406. Thus far, the property had cost nearly $20,000,000 to create or $82,000 per mile! Revenues of the company that year amounted to $369,577. “It was a well-known fact that the stock and bonds of the company had been sold and hypothecated far below one hundred-cents on the dollar. The comforting announcement was also made in the public prints that the Boston, Hartford & Erie has only to build a little more than 100 miles of railroad between Hartford and Fishkill. If there ever was a pig-in-the-poke transaction, this of Erie’s with that Boston clique was certainly the one.”115

Eldridge had been running the B, H, and E with Henry Farwell and Mark Healy as an executive committee of the board. But the trio could not raise substantial funds from selling the Berdell bonds or its company stock, as both were depressed in price. Again, the company asked the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for help. Among those supporting the measure was Charles Francis Adams Jr. of Quincy, a railroad reformer, author, and grandson of US President John Adams, and Francis Bird of Walpole, a prominent Whig politician and paper manufacturer. Engineer Edward Appleton was at the ready with the merits of the company and the future business it stood to enjoy if completed.

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