stock given was small in each case, and the principle was not well carried out.[74] The cash requirements of the system were estimated at $36,092,500; being swelled by arrears of interest, receivers’ certificates, need for working capital, reorganization expenditures, and the like. The plan proposed to cancel them by assessments on stockholders and by the sale of securities before described. On the first preferred stock, $2 a share was levied, $20 on the second preferred, and $20 on the common stock, with a syndicate guarantee for each. This netted $5,460,000. Stockholders received new preferred stock for their payments. Deducting $5,460,000 preferred stock from the securities reserved under the plan to be sold for cash, there remained $9,000,000 prior liens, $12,450,000 first mortgage 4s, and $10,990,000 preferred stock, or a total of $32,440,000; all of which a syndicate agreed to take.[75] In addition the company disposed of securities in the treasury, including $3,800,000 stock of the Western Union Telegraph Company, for $3,500,000.[76] Both classes of stock were vested in five voting trustees, for a period of five years. The trustees might, however, deliver the stock at an earlier date in their discretion, and in fact did so in August, 1901. No additional mortgage was to be put upon the property, and no increase in the amount of the preferred stock was to be made, except in each instance after obtaining the consent of the holders of a majority of the whole amount of preferred stock outstanding, given at a meeting of the stockholders called for that purpose, and the consent of the holders of a majority of such part of the common stock as should be represented at such meeting, the holders of each class of stock voting separately. During the existence of the voting trust similar consent of holders of like amounts of the respective classes of trust certificates was to be necessary for the purposes indicated. Only a portion of the leased and dependent lines were provided for in the plan, but the various cases were left to be passed on separately. Thus the Baltimore Belt Line was finally leased at a rental equivalent to 4 per cent on the outstanding 5 per cent bonds; while the acquisition of the Baltimore & Ohio Southwestern and the Central Ohio railroads involved the payment of a cash bonus, and an increase in the preferred and common stock outstanding. The mileage of the system suffered little change. Many of the branches were sold at foreclosure, and bought in by the parent line; and a glance at the balance-sheet in 1899 shows that besides the prior liens and the first 4s, an issue of Pittsburg Junction and Middle Division bonds was the principal tool employed. These securities, bearing 3½ per cent, and falling due in 1925, were issued; 1st, to retire branch-line securities, and to weld the system into one united whole; and 2d, to provide new capital for enlargement and betterment and extension.