In the second place, the meeting proposed a dividend of 21 per cent on the preferred stock, representing arrears due, and of 3 per cent on the common; both cash, and to be paid in case the collateral loan should succeed.[205] In order to give shareholders time to consider, an adjournment was taken for two weeks, after which the dividend on the preferred stock was approved, though that on the common was not. It seems almost superfluous to insist upon the folly of this dividend. The Reading had not, in reality, “surmounted the difficulties of the last four eventful years.” Scarcely any of the benefits promised by Mr. Gowen’s plan of reorganization had been secured; fixed charges had not been reduced, because it had been found impossible to get creditors to take new securities in exchange for the old, and equally impossible to sell any considerable amount of the new securities for cash. While old charges had remained unabated, new charges had been added through the lease of the Jersey Central, new car trusts, and the like, and the very gain in earnings which might have been construed as favorable was due to increased mileage, and was not proportional to the growth of the system.[206] A fitting sequel to Mr. Gowen’s words and acts was the scrip payment for labor and supplies which took place in May, 1884, and the accompanying fall in the prices of the company’s securities. On June 2 the company again passed into receivers’ hands. The same judges were applied to as in 1880, and the same receivers were appointed, except that Mr. Gowen, who had given up the presidency of the company, was replaced by Mr. George de Keim, his successor.[207] The various creditors had now to do what should have been done before, and, by lightening the charges upon the road, to put it in a position where its solvency could be maintained. The chances for obtaining radical action from the bondholders were somewhat brighter, since even the most obstinate were being forced to realize that no halfway measures would avail; and a reasonable solution was even thus early hinted at in the suggestion that some of the bonds under which the road was staggering should be replaced by stock. Nevertheless, we shall find in this reorganization a slow working out of the requirements for a plan, and a slow process of at least partial reconcilement to the inevitable.