election, Gowen actually issued a prospectus for his new income and mortgage loans, and cabled to Vice-President Keim that he was satisfied that he could dispose of the general mortgage A bonds at 110 and the general mortgage B bonds at par.[178] Meanwhile in America both parties had recourse to the courts: the McCalmonts, to prevent the issue of the deferred income bonds, and the friends of Mr. Gowen to get the election postponed in order to give the president time to return from Europe. The latter suit was the first decided. Judge McKennan, of the United States Circuit Court, refused to grant an order, but unofficially advised postponement. The board of managers therefore withdrew the notice of the annual meeting, and on January 12 voted to postpone it indefinitely. Counsel for the McCalmonts then made application to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia for a mandamus to compel the board to call a meeting. They obtained a peremptory mandamus on January 24, but accepted the date of March 14 as satisfactory, and forbore further proceedings. The matter of the deferred income bonds was complicated by a full and complete authorization which Mr. Gowen had before obtained from the Circuit Court for the issue of his bonds. The request of the McCalmonts was twofold: the court was prayed to revoke the previous decree, and to enjoin any further action in the negotiation or consummation of the said scheme; or, failing this, to direct the officers of the company and the receivers to refrain from the issue of the bonds until the form thereof should have been settled by the said court, and also until deposit with the receivers should have been made of the $2,058,000 provided as a guarantee.[179] The first request sought a prohibition of the issue; the second attempted to delay the negotiation of the bonds until the annual election should have passed and the McCalmonts should have had a chance to obtain control. The immediate result was the transference to Philadelphia of the $2,058,000 guaranteed, from its place of deposit in London. In February the McCalmonts obtained a revocation of the original grant of authority for the deferred income bonds, a continuance of the suit for a preliminary injunction, and an order restraining the respondents from “making any agreement or ordering any act by which the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company [might] be definitely bound touching the deferred bond plan or the proposed mortgage loan of $150,000,000.”[180]