This reorganization had certain interesting features. As before remarked, it sought, as did the reorganization of 1889, to replace securities, the interest on which was a fixed charge, by securities on which payment of interest or dividends should be optional. But whereas the earlier reorganization had depended on income bonds, this plan included both income bonds and preferred stock. There are several reasons why preferred stock is preferable to income bonds, and it will be remembered that a peculiar difficulty experienced from the income bonds of 1889 had arisen from the impossibility of putting other mortgages ahead of them; yet that this was not the chief obstacle sought to be avoided by the use of preferred stock at this later date appears from the current use of adjustment bonds. Provision for future capital requirements was in fact made in another way, and the question was not here involved. So far as the acceptability of the income bonds and the preferred stock respectively to the old bondholders was concerned, it should be noted that the men who received the greater part of the new issue were the holders of the old income and second mortgage bonds; that is, Englishmen who had already shown their preference for income bonds as opposed to stock. The chief reason for the new expedient seems to have been the desire to retain for the general mortgage holders a priority of lien, while reducing part of their holdings to the level of an optional obligation. If income bonds or preferred stock alone had been used, these would necessarily have been given to the owners both of general mortgage and of second mortgage or old income bonds; so that the former might have received a larger amount, but not any lien different in kind. By the scheme proposed, all possible interest on the securities given for old mortgage 4s was to be met before anything was to be paid on the equivalent of issues which had been inferior before the reorganization took place. Abundant provision was made for future capital requirements. That lesson had been learned once for all. Cash requirements were met by an assessment. In speaking of the reorganization of 1889 the rule was laid down that the disposal of securities for cash is impossible except at an enormous sacrifice in a time of general depression. There was widespread depression in 1895, and the reorganization managers wisely made no attempt to negotiate a sale. The amount of the assessment on the common stock was very considerably above the quoted price of the shares, but it was correctly figured that the hope of future increase in value would be sufficient to induce stockholders to furnish the sums required. Not to tax them too heavily call was made also on the junior securities. On the whole, the decrease of $5,000,000 in fixed charges more than compensated the stockholders for the additional obligations put between them and their property; their claim on the road itself was made more remote, but