The year 1883 now seemed to find the Reading imbued with new life. Earnings increased, both gross and net, fixed charges as reported rose less rapidly, and the net profits for the year, or balance on all operations, showed a threefold increase. “The company,” said Mr. Gowen, “has now surmounted the difficulties of the last four eventful years.”[203] The annual meeting in January was a genuine love-feast, marked by the presentation of resolutions highly flattering to Mr. Gowen. “We trust,” said one, “we thankfully appreciate your herculean efforts in our behalf, in the face of unparalleled difficulties and obstacles, in rescuing our property from bankruptcy against the malignant and determined efforts of its enemies and conspirators to foreclose and wreck it.” “As citizens of this great commonwealth,” said another, “we beg to add our gratitude and admiration for your untiring, brave, honest, and able devotion, which has preserved the Philadelphia & Reading Company intact, and has fairly started it on a broader career of usefulness.”[204] Not less extraordinary was the further action of this harmonious meeting. In the first place, it authorized the creation of a collateral trust loan of $12,000,000 for the purpose of paying the floating debt, the balance due upon the purchase of Central Railroad Company of New Jersey stock, and the retirement of the outstanding income mortgage bonds. What, may be inquired, had become of the deferred income bonds of which Mr. Gowen had been so proud, and the $5,000,000 additional first series consols which with them were to cover the floating debt, if a new collateral loan was needed for the purpose for which they had been considered ample? As for the purchase of Jersey Central shares, an account would require a chapter in itself. The intent had been to secure more complete control of this subsidiary road. The purchase had been made on margin in May. By January, 1884, more funds were necessary to carry the stock; and as the business depression grew acute, the Reading was obliged to seek a time loan from Mr. Vanderbilt, and to pledge the purchased securities as collateral therefor. When the loan matured Reading was no better off than it had been before, and Vanderbilt, who seldom mixed philanthropy with business, sold the stock. The original purchase had been at 78; the prices obtained when the stock was thrown on the market ranged from 57 to 50, and the Reading lost the difference, besides those advantages which it had expected to gain.