In every case during the nineties the amount of assessment exceeded the sum for which common shareholders could have sold their stock one month after the publication of the reorganization plan. The difference ranged from $3.50 for the Erie to $17⅔ for the Reading; in other words the assessments wiped out the whole value remaining to common stockholders, and exacted an additional contribution as the price of participation in any future prosperity. In the case of the preferred stock, where values were greater and assessments less heavy, the results were not the same; but even here the proportional demand was large, and amounted to 100 per cent of current quotations in the case of the Northern Pacific. Before 1893 assessments were fewer in number and not so great in amount. It is to the subsequent rise in stock quotations to which we must turn for an explanation of the willingness of stockholders to contribute such heavy sums. The assessments, we find, did not come out of the stockholders’ pockets in the end; for their payment, in connection with other features of reorganization, so enhanced the value of shares that only six months after reorganization the price of stocks in all cases was nearly equal to the assessment plus the previous market quotation. In some instances, such as the Baltimore & Ohio, the sum amounted to much more than this total.[701] Refusal to pay would have wiped out the stockholder’s interest and have kept him from benefiting from the rise. It is needless to add that quotations to-day are many times the amount of the assessments. The increase in value has occurred alike for common and preferred stock, even in times of severe depression. On the whole, it has abundantly justified the payments which stockholders were asked to make. The use of assessments alone represents the most radical and the soundest method of raising cash. It disposes of the accumulated quick liabilities once and for all; and involves no subsequent increase in interest charges. It was the method of the Atchison and the Union Pacific after 1893, of the Reading from 1883–6, and of the Erie from 1875–7. It was furthermore the method of the Western, New York & Pennsylvania in 1893,[702] of the Norfolk & Western in 1896,[703] and of other railroads which might be named. Probably its most drastic application was in the case of the Houston & Texas Central in 1887, where an assessment of 73 per cent was found necessary to discharge the floating debt and to provide cash payments for interest and bonus to first mortgage bondholders, and to pay the charges, expenses, and other liabilities made or incurred by the Trust Company.[704]