Chapters on the History of the Southern PacificDaggett, Stuart
History
Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific
Daggett, Stuart
Pacific railroads -- History; Railroads -- California -- History; Southern Pacific Company
Five years later the United States Pacific Railway Commission, in
an important report, recommended also that the net indebtedness of
the Central Pacific Railroad Company be ascertained as of a certain
date—this time as of July 1, 1888—and that arrangements be made to
fund the amount so determined into new railroad fifty-year 3 per cent
bonds, which should be made a lien upon all the property which the
Central Pacific owned or in which it had an interest.[553] Congress
was not ready, however, to refund the Pacific railroad debts upon the
terms proposed either by the Commissioner of Railroads or by this
special body of experts.
The next official report was that issued by a select committee to which
the United States Pacific Railway Commission report was referred. This
committee report was known as the Frye-Davis report, from the names of
the Senators who transmitted the sections dealing with the Union and
Central Pacific railroads, respectively. The committee was instructed
to, and did, personally examine the roads of the Union, Kansas,
Central, and Western Pacific Railroad companies, together with that
of the Central Branch Union Pacific. It further prepared a plan for
refunding the Pacific railroad debt.
So far as the Central Pacific was concerned, the committee proposed
that the company should pay its debt in seventy-five years from date,
with interest at 2 per cent. In view of the serious financial condition
of the company, and the alleged necessity of building several bridges
and some additional mileage in California, 1 per cent of the 2 per
cent was to be capitalized for ten years. During the first ten years
the company’s annual payment was thus to be from $600,000 to $650,000
per year; after that time it was to be about $1,400,000 annually.
The Frye-Davis committee therefore required a smaller payment and
contemplated a longer extension of time than did the United States
Pacific Railway Commission. Like its predecessor, it demanded from the
Central Pacific, as security, a mortgage on all the roads and property
of every name and description which the Central Pacific possessed,
including a mortgage on the whole road from four miles west of Ogden to
San José. This mortgage was to include the lease of the Central Pacific
to the Southern Pacific, and there was now inserted a provision that
the rental paid by the latter should never be less than the sums that
the bill called for from the Central Pacific, thus making the Southern
Pacific in effect a guarantor of the arrangement.[554]
Further Reports
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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