A comparison of this with the plan of the reorganization trustees at first announced will show the changes made. Nothing of value which previous reorganizations had worked out was cast aside. The fixed interest allowed the general mortgage bondholders was raised in the hope that they might support the plan, and more care was taken to follow the order of priority in the advantages offered to the various classes of junior securityholders; an end to which the four classes of stock were admirably adapted. The voting trust was altogether new, and was doubtless intended to ensure a policy in accord with the syndicate’s wishes for a series of years, and to prevent a renewal of the vagaries of Mr. Gowen’s administration. The provision for foreclosure was to be expected in view of the extreme difficulty of obtaining the assents of so many conflicting interests; but with a net revenue of $12,026,309 (both companies) and fixed charges of $6,971,687, the task of maintaining the solvency of the companies in future did not seem an impossible one. In opposition to the plan the Lockwood Committee urged that the scheme was unjust to certain classes of bonds; that it was cumbersome, expensive, conferred power on the trustees which should have been reserved for the direction of the new company, and that the reserved powers to change any part of the plan, and the uncertainties connected with the settlements under it, involved risks which creditors should not accept.[224] The objections were not weighty. If the Lockwood or any other committee had proved itself able to formulate and carry through a plan, or if the syndicate arrangement had been proposed at the very beginning of the receivership, bondholders might fairly have criticised its expense. In point of fact numerous attempts to reconcile divergent interests had failed, and what with Messrs. Lockwood, Bartol, Whelen, Gowen, and their respective followings, the future offered no more promising result. Meanwhile bondholders were going without their interest, and costs of the receivership were mounting up; so that a greater expense than that of which Mr. Lockwood complained was being incurred by delay. As for the general mortgage bondholders, they were given a chance at their old interest whenever the road should earn it, and could fairly ask no more; while that it was inequitable to ask income bondholders to accept a reduction to $50 in their annual interest, or holders of the first series 5s to wait for their interest until liens before theirs had been satisfied, are conclusions to which few will agree.