Whatever may be said as to the necessity of extension, it is evident that the position of the system by 1888 had changed for the worse. This last-named year was a bad one, it is true, but certain evils of which the directors then complained were permanent, and should have been permanently allowed for. Some realization of the fact that the Atchison might be going too fast appeared in the financial journals of the time. “Were these undertakings less solidly backed,” said the _Railway Age_, “there might be apprehension that enterprise was being pushed too far and too fast.”[415] But on the whole the rapid growth and enormous extent of the system seem to dazzle beholders. “The career of this company,” said the _Railway Age_ again, “has been one of the marvels of railway enterprise, and it would be unsafe now to attempt to fix a limit to its extension or to the ambition of its Napoleonic president and its bold and enterprising directors.”[416] In 1887 the directors increased the rate of dividend from 6 to 7 per cent.[417] The action was thoroughly unjustifiable, and the rate was speedily again reduced. By the end of 1888 the main company was liable to be called on any year to the extent of $8,625,365, which was the amount of interest on auxiliary roads either guaranteed or payable as rentals. In four years the mileage of the Atchison system had increased 150 per cent; its bonded indebtedness 239 per cent; its fixed charges 216 per cent; and its gross earnings only 69 per cent; while the deficits on its branch lines were obviously not matters of bookkeeping, and the value of interchanged business was not equal to the increased burdens which the subsidiary lines imposed. The floating debt mounted up, as is usual in times of trouble. From a total of $3,317,446 in 1884 it increased to $8,076,059 in 1888. To offset it the directors secured in October, 1888, subscriptions to a $10,000,000 issue of “guarantee fund,” three-year notes. Not all of the amount authorized was to be sold at once, but from time to time Atchison was to call on subscribers to take part of their subscription, and the notes were to bear 6 per cent from the time they were put forth.[418] For the rest, the directors economized as much as possible. Salaries were cut 10 per cent in every branch of the service, beginning with the president, and the unlucky 7 per cent rate of dividend was reduced to 6 per cent, to 2 per cent, and then to nothing at all in successive quarters. None of these expedients proved sufficient. In fact, the situation was so critical that nothing short of a general reorganization could probably have secured the radical reduction in fixed charges which the company required.