In addition to gaining control of the leading manufacturing concerns and the chief natural resources of the country, the great capitalist interests seized upon social values to the amount of billions of dollars through stock watering and manipulations of one kind or another. "Between 1868 and 1872, for example, the share capital of the Erie was increased from $17,000,000 to $78,000,000, largely for the purpose of stock-market manipulation.... The original Central Pacific Railroad, for instance, actually cost only $58,000,000; it is a matter of record that $120,000,000 was paid a construction company for the work. The syndicate which financed the road received $62,500,000 par value in securities as profits, a sum greater than it actually cost to build the property. The 80 per cent stock dividend of the New York Central in 1868; scrip dividends on the Reading in the seventies; the 50 per cent dividend of the Atchison in 1881; the 100 per cent stock dividends of the Louisville and Nashville in 1880, by a pen stroke adding $20,000,000 to 'cost of road' upon the balance sheet; the notorious 100 per cent dividend of the Boston and Albany in 1882 [are further examples].... Recent inflations of capitalization in connection with railroad consolidation are headed by the case of the Rock Island Company. In 1902 this purely financial corporation bought up the old Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway, capitalized at $75,000,000 and substituted therefor its own stock to the amount of $117,000,000, together with $75,000,000 of collateral trust bonds, secured by the stock of the property acquired. The entire history of the New York traction companies is studded with similar occurrences. One instance may suffice. In 1906 the Interborough-Metropolitan Company purchased $105,540,000 in securities of the merged lines, and issued in place thereof $138,309,000 of its own stock and $70,000,000 in bonds.... E. H. Harriman and three associates ... expanded the total capitalization of the [Alton] road from $33,950,000 to $114,600,000, an increase of over $80,000,000. In improvements and additions to the property out of this augmented capitalization, their own accounts showed only about $18,000,000 expended. It thus appears that securities aggregating $62,600,000 were put forth during this time [seven years, beginning in 1898], without one dollar of consideration. This sum is equal to about $66,000 per mile of line owned--a figure considerably in excess of the average net capitalization of the railroads of the country."[49]