originally cost $5,207,167, upon which there were encumbrances of $5,015,000. “But little weight,” said he, “should be given to the fear that rivals will possess the surrendered property; most of it is not a tempting investment.” Exorbitant prices were paid for the lands purchased. By 1881, as noted, there had been expended in all by the two Reading companies $73,326,668. This same report said that, “assuming the profit on the future coal product to be 30 cents per ton of coal shipped, that the company will be able to reduce the rate of interest on the money needed to hold and develop the property from 7 per cent to 6 per cent per annum, and that the development will be at the rate just stated [outlined earlier in the report], the whole estate has a value of $32,394,799: the company’s interest in the estate is worth $30,630,648, and, including colliery improvements belonging to the company, but situate on lands owned by others, the whole of the company’s property is worth $31,197,484.”[160] It is unquestionable that the Reading did acquire an enormously valuable property in the decade succeeding 1870. It seems just as clear that it paid more for this than was necessary; but what is perhaps more to the point is the fact that the Reading paid more than it could afford. Whatever the ultimate advantages to be gained by exclusive possession of any considerable section of the coal fields, the Reading was not large enough nor financially strong enough to make such vast purchases within so short a space of time. The prosperity of the Civil War had disappeared, net profits were fluctuating without marked tendency to increase, the figures for 1870 being actually less than those of 1863, while the interest on bonds had more than doubled since 1867, and the sum required for dividends had increased. To advance $54,886,647 to the Coal & Iron Company under these conditions, and to become responsible as guarantor for $14,929,557 more, would have been ill-advised even had the prices paid by the company been in strict accord with the commercial estimate of the time. Under the best of circumstances returns from much of the property acquired could not be secured for many years. The parts of the coal fields which were worked yielded an income, though it was seldom that the collieries were allowed to run to their full capacity; but those districts which were bought for the sake of controlling the coal situation, or in order to secure a future reserve, and which in many cases could not be worked at existing prices, occasioned a drain upon the company to the amount of interest on the purchase money, with no return of any kind. Moreover, the purchase of the coal lands put the Reading in the anomalous position of a railroad corporation interested in industrial lines. It could no longer be content with encouraging the transportation of its main source of revenue (coal), but had to care as well for the price at which this coal was sold.