The Union Pacific had reported an annual surplus, the other two roads an annual deficit; the Union Pacific had not defaulted, the Kansas and Denver Pacific had done little else; the highest mark which the Kansas Pacific stock had touched in January, 1879, had been 13, that of the Union Pacific had been 68½. But the question, as Gould well knew, was not one of productive but one of destructive capacity, and the means of coercion which he employed was a demonstration of the ease with which the Kansas Pacific could be made formidable as a competing line. In November, 1879, he purchased the Missouri Pacific from Kansas City to St. Louis; about the same time he bought two minor roads between the Kansas Pacific and the Union Pacific in Kansas, and announced his intention of extending the Kansas Pacific to Salt Lake City, there to connect with the Central Pacific and to form a third transcontinental route. The story is clearly told in the report of the United States Pacific Railway Commission.[475] The result was the consent of the Union Pacific directors to the terms imposed, and the execution of an agreement dated January 14, 1880, whereby the Union and the Kansas Pacific, with all their respective assets and liabilities, were put together at par of their respective capitals,—$36,762,300 and $10,000,000,—to which was added the capital of the Denver Pacific, $4,000,000, forming a new company called the Union Pacific Railway Company, with a capital of $50,762,300, and a bonded indebtedness of $92,984,624.[476] This corporation was larger in every way than the old Union Pacific Railroad, except in one particular—earnings above fixed charges. It had 1821 miles of line instead of 1042; $22,455,134 gross earnings instead of $13,201,077; $10,545,119 operating expenses instead of $5,475,503; and yet, since the consolidation was a union of some strength with a vast deal of weakness, there were few who profited by it save the holders of Kansas Pacific or Denver Pacific stocks. Those lucky and skilful individuals saw the quotations of Kansas Pacific common rise from a high level of 13 in January, 1879, to one of 59 in June, and of 92½ in December; and the stock which had been a football in the market thus become of such value that in 1887 Gould was able to lay before a committee of Congress, in justification of the terms described, a table which showed for 1880 market prices of Kansas and Union Pacific stock which were approximately the same.[477]