Government with the road. Fourth and last, the Government might have demanded payment in cash. The sum which the company would have had to obtain was extremely large, but the accumulated sinking fund reduced it considerably, and many thought that the balance could be raised. In March, 1896, before a Senate committee, Mr. John Rooney, for the first mortgage bondholders, proposed that the Government, through a commission, should buy in the Union Pacific at foreclosure sale, should issue a new general mortgage at a lower rate of interest than the existing prior liens, and should pay off both the first and the government mortgage with the proceeds;—the road to be turned over to the subscribers.[508] This suggestion took place among many others which were in the nature of a compromise. Thus the reorganization committee, in 1895, offered to pay the principal of the government debt provided that the interest were cancelled;[509] and Receiver Anderson proposed in 1896 that the company pay the principal of the debt by adding funds raised by it to the amount of the sinking fund, and settle the arrears of interest with a 50-year 2 per cent bond. Full payment in cash was, of course, what the Government desired, and everything short of that it hesitated to accept; but equally, of course, full payment was what the bondholders of the road were most unwilling to concede; and hearing after hearing took place before committees of the Senate and of the House without definite result. Meanwhile the general reorganization of the company was going on. In November, 1893, the various interests and factions of the road held a conference in New York, which resulted in the choice of a reorganization committee as follows: Senator Brice, chairman; Mr. A. H. Boissevain, for the foreign holders; General Louis Fitzgerald, president of the Mercantile Trust Company, for the Gould interests; Mr. Carr, for the estate of F. L. Ames; General Dodge, for the Denver and Gulf roads’ interests; and Colonel H. L. Higginson, for the Oregon Railway & Navigation interests.[510] Subsequently Mr. J. P. Morgan accepted a place.[511] This committee was the only comprehensive one appointed until 1895; but numerous other committees sprang up to represent special interests of one kind or another, appearing frequently as interest on new classes of bonds was defaulted, and having, with the main reorganization committee, to deal specifically with the payment of the floating debt and the reduction of fixed charges. Upon the ability of the committees to agree depended the retention of the Union Pacific in something like its existing shape.