This ends that part of the history of the Atchison Company which can be connected with either of its reorganizations. From 1895 to the present time the Atchison has enjoyed a rapidly increasing prosperity, due in part to the lightening of the charges upon it, in part to able management, and in part to the great increase in volume of business which has been a characteristic of the time. One or two things may be noted. A final settlement has been made of the relations between the Southern Pacific and the Atchison in the Southwest. It will be remembered that the final result of the negotiations in 1882 had been the purchase of the former Mojave division from the Needles to Mojave, but that since title could not be acquired until the maturity of the outstanding mortgages, Atchison had leased this track at an annual rental of 6 per cent on the purchase price. In 1897 this rental was cancelled. The Southern Pacific could not even then give a clear title, but exchanged a long time lease of the Mojave division against a similar lease of the Sonora Railway, the Atchison branch which reached from Deming to Guaymas. The rentals cancelled each other, and the actual transfer is eventually to take place.[453] The arrangement is mutually advantageous. On the one hand the Mojave division formed a spur of the Southern Pacific, and on the other the Sonora Railway was totally disconnected from the Atchison, so that the latter company was obliged to use the Southern Pacific’s tracks to reach the property at all. In 1898 Chairman Walker of the Executive Committee was able to announce the substantial completion of negotiations for the purchase of the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railroad, running from Bakersfield to Stockton, California; the former town being sixty-eight miles from Mojave and the latter something less than that from San Francisco.[454] Atchison at once began building at the Stockton end, and reached San Francisco the following year. The Santa Fe Terminal Company was then incorporated with a capital stock of $1,000,000, Atchison secured a traffic contract with the Southern Pacific, and through freight trains were run from Chicago to San Francisco on May 1, 1900, through passenger trains following two months later. Besides this there have been important extensions in Arizona and New Mexico. In 1901 the Atchison purchased two-thirds of the bonds, and practically all of the capital stock of the Pecos Valley & Northeastern Railway Company, stretching 370 miles from Texico through the southeastern corner of New Mexico to Pecos City, Texas. In July of the same year it bought the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phœnix Railroad, from Ash Fork, Arizona, to Phœnix, Arizona, some 195 miles. Construction has been practically completed between Belen, New Mexico, a few miles south of Albuquerque, and Amarillo, Texas, to afford an alternative and somewhat shorter route from California to Eastern Kansas. A still more noteworthy