The failure occurred on May 21, and on May 24 Messrs. F. B. Gowen (president of the company), Edwin A. Lewis, and Stephen A. Caldwell were appointed receivers. Their resources were scanty and they had to do with them as best they could. On the one hand they applied to the court for authority to borrow $1,000,000 to pay the wages of employees and interest falling due July 1, and on the other they cut down expenses by reducing the working force in the repair shops, by putting the shops on short time, by discontinuing many of the trains on different lines, and by ceasing all dead work at the collieries. Before any plan could be proposed for the rehabilitation of the company the condition of its finances had to be known, and this again the receivers took in charge. Their report in June, 1880, showed a sufficiently serious state of affairs. The floating debt of the Railroad Company had mounted up to $10,254,766, besides $1,900,482 more for the Coal & Iron Company. This represented an increase of $3,604,000 as compared with November 30, 1879, and an English bondholders’ committee declared that only $2,930,000 of it were represented by value.[164] The rest had apparently been incurred in desperate attempts to preserve the solvency of the company. The total liabilities of the Railroad and Coal & Iron Companies, including mortgage, debenture debt, floating debt, and miscellaneous items, but excluding stock, were $152,436,890. The deduction from these figures of the Coal & Iron bonds held by the Railroad Company, which would have constituted a duplication of indebtedness, left a total of $106,215,830. The stock of the two companies amounted to $42,278,175, and the stock in the hands of the public to $39,278,175. The grand total of liabilities was thus the enormous sum of $145,494,005. The charges for interest and sinking funds were $7,542,094, and the annual payment of $5,629,764, due on $87,558,482 of railroad bonded indebtedness, shows that the rate of interest upon the bonds was high. The net revenue was $5,494,979, and there was therefore a deficit of $2,047,115. Meanwhile the Coal & Iron Company had reported a regular deficit up to 1880, which, though not significant in itself, because of close relations with the Railroad Company and the impossibility of determining how much the Coal Company’s rightful profits were reduced by exorbitant transportation rates, yet made it very clear that from this source the Railroad Company could expect no aid toward the cancellation of the railroad deficit revealed.