Much could be done at this time by able and energetic management; there was, however, much that could not be done; and it is to this that we must attribute Mr. Adams’s failure to put the road in a permanently stable position. For first, the competition which the Union Pacific was obliged to meet was constantly increasing in severity. In 1881 the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe was extended to a junction with the Southern Pacific at Deming; in 1883, in the language of the annual report, “Not only was the Rio Grande completed to Ogden, making, in connection with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Burlington & Missouri extension of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, a direct competing route with the Union Pacific from Chicago and all eastern points to a common western terminus, but the Northern Pacific also was connected through, making a third transcontinental route.”[489] In 1887 the Atchison built 450 miles of line and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific was scarcely behind, so that Kansas and Nebraska were covered with a network of lines, which transformed the natural local traffic of the Union Pacific into competitive business of the most uncertain kind. At the same time the profitable high grade business was giving way to a larger volume of mineral traffic, and the average length of haul was increasing, all of which resulted in a decrease of about 45 per cent in the average receipts per ton mile between 1881 and 1890, a slow increase in gross earnings which bore little relation to the greatly increased volume of business done, and a fluctuating progress of net earnings, which were actually over $3,000,000 less in 1889 than they had been eight years before. And second, during this time the fixed charges of the Union Pacific did not materially decrease. They were $7,626,626 when Mr. Adams assumed the presidency, and $7,309,142 five years later; and the necessity for further decrease was shown by the fact that the total net income of the road was $11,402,199 in 1884, $10,339,402 in 1889, and $9,561,673 in 1890. What Mr. Adams could do he did, and the funded debt under his régime decreased from $90,760,582 in 1884 to $82,090,585 in 1889, and to $73,968,885 in 1890; the company steadily buying up its own indebtedness: but the conditions which he had to face were too exacting, and the saving made here was offset in other ways.