The floating debt, estimated at $25,150,000, was provided for in part by assessment, and in part by the sale of securities to the syndicate for cash; 20 per cent being levied on first, second, and third preference income bonds, 20 per cent on the stock, and 4 per cent on the deferred incomes; while the syndicate agreed to take $4,000,000 of the new general mortgage bonds and $8,000,000 of the new first preferred stock. The assessment was expected to yield $20,862,289, and the syndicate to contribute in cash $7,300,000; leaving an estimated cash balance of $3,000,000. In addition, the syndicate (Messrs. J. P. Morgan & Co., J. Kennedy Tod & Co., Hallgarten & Co., and A. Iselin & Co.) undertook to underwrite the payment of the assessments on the income bonds and stock, and to guarantee the extension or payment of the improvement mortgage and Coal & Iron Company bonds, most of which were to mature in the following two years. No great reduction of fixed charges was of course to be expected. The cancellation of the floating debt effected, nevertheless, a certain saving, so that charges for the future were estimated at $9,300,000 as against net earnings of $9,839,971 in 1894; while the refunding or extension of maturing bonds was looked to for a reduction of $500,000.[275] It is plain that this plan favored the general mortgage bondholders to the last degree, and admitted them to the reorganized company with absolutely no sacrifice save that of the addition of $4,000,000 to the total general mortgage issue. They funded no coupons, they suffered no diminution of interest and no shaving of principal; they paid no assessment; and as an additional protection to them, the provision was inserted that all classes of stock of the new company, except such number as might be disposed of to qualify directors, were to be voted by three voting trustees, of whom J. P. Morgan and F. P. Olcott were designated in the plan. It has seldom happened in any reorganization that a mortgage similar to the general mortgage in this case has been able to take and hold so strong a position.[276] The secret lay in the fact that the road had been earning the interest on the general mortgage bonds; and that under these circumstances no interest or combination of interests could force the holders to accept less than payment in full of all their claims. The situation could never have arisen in the earlier reorganization; it could never have occurred where a reduction in annual payments was required for the salvation of the property, or even where the amount of cash to be raised to pay the floating debt was so large that junior securityholders would have relinquished their holdings rather than pay the necessary assessments. In this case none of these conditions existed, and all the burden was thrown on the holders of junior mortgages and stock. It must be remembered, also, that though in ordinary cases the difference between