The East Tennessee had hoped to make profitable the lines which it had so rapidly acquired. Unfortunately the company was poorly equipped for such a task. Its finance had been extravagant. In 1875, on 269 miles of lines there had been $7317 in stock and $15,620 in bonds per mile. In 1883 the mortgage bonds and car trusts outstanding per mile owned amounted to $23,444, the income bonds to $15,404, and the capital stock to $41,079. A grand total of $79,927 as compared with the $22,937 of eight years earlier, and an average of almost $100,000 in securities per mile of new line acquired! Ninety-nine per cent of net income was being absorbed in paying interest on all classes of securities, although maintenance figures were kept as low as $630 per mile of line. This large volume of stocks and bonds made improvement from earnings impossible, and prevented conservative management by taking from the stockholders any chance of dividends, and by reducing the quotations of common stock to less than $5 per share. And though in some respects the location of the system was good, the route which it offered to much of its business was indirect, the competition which it had to meet was severe, and its Atlantic terminal, Brunswick, was of small importance compared with the thriving cities of Savannah and Norfolk. The result was a failure to secure the gains from consolidation which had been expected. Surplus earnings were continuously small, and current bills were left to run; until by 1883 the floating debt had become so large that an issue of $1,200,000 in debenture bonds was required to take care of it. The failure of the East Tennessee to weld its connections into an efficient transportation system left it helpless in face of the panic of 1884. Earnings fell off in that year, a directors’ committee was appointed,[304] and the resulting report revealed a plain inability on the part of the company to meet its charges. “The interest charges proper for the calendar year 1885 are,” said the committee, $1,476,505.85 “To this must be added the principal due on car trusts and debentures in 1885, 280,954.11 ------------- “Or a total of $1,757,459.96 “The payments on similar account will be— in 1886, $1,739,196.28 in 1887, 1,720,932.60 gradually decreasing until the debentures and car trusts being paid off in 1894, the total fixed charges for the year 1895 will be $1,295,970.00 “The net revenue for the year 1883–4 was 1,699,925.84