Deducting these sums from the annual income returns of the company, he found that but $971,447 had been earned which had been properly applicable to dividends, whereas $6,269,008 had been declared in the seven years, of which $3,312,089 were cash and $2,956,920 stock. Earnings had been increased by the most arbitrary of book-keeping devices. In 1892 the value of the Western Union stock held in the treasury since the sale of the Baltimore & Ohio telegraph lines in 1888 had been written up $468,038, and the stock of another company, the Consolidated Coal Company, had been written up $114,300. Not only had advances to branch lines been entered as assets, but the interest on these advances had been credited to income, the only basis being that it was hoped that such interest would some day be paid; and on the other side of the account, charges against operating expenses had been charged to profit and loss on the same principles by which the Garretts had rolled up their fictitious surplus of 1888. Turning to the capital account, Mr. Little showed an increase in liabilities from 1888 to 1895 of $22,180,000, not including $5,481,835 representing chiefly the company’s endorsements of notes of its subsidiary roads which stood here for the first time revealed. This money apparently had been put into the property, and yet Mr. Little’s corrected figures showed net earnings to be actually smaller in 1895 than in the earlier years. Criticisms of the report attached themselves mainly to the last items treated. That the extensive endorsement of branch-line notes, absent as any mention of the practice was from the annual reports, was most misleading and unsound, nobody could deny; but the broad question of what charges during the seven years should have been paid out of income, and what not, gave rise to lively discussion. Severe strictures on Mr. Little’s statements were made by Patterson and Corwin, two accountants appointed to re-examine the books of the company. “It would appear,” said they, “that Mr. Little has made some curious errors, and has been strikingly inconsistent.”[66] Nevertheless the more damaging of the latter’s accusations seem to have been accepted, and the Baltimore & Ohio took its place with other American corporations, the managements of which have indulged in secret juggling with the books.