A certain transportation company in the East had a legal vice-president who many people supposed was a political heritage to the road, a man for whom it was supposed a berth had been made by the owner of the property, who was something of a politician himself. A quick turning of the wheel of fortune had thrown one political party out of business at the capital, and another in. The man was given a place in the railroad offices, and a little later was made a vice-president. It so happened that the vice-president knew more than supposers might even imagine; but he was a quiet man, and sometimes some of his own clerks wondered why he drew his big salary. After he had been at his desk a dozen years they found the reason. In gathering up a number of railroad properties to make the parent company--after the fashion of modern railroad practice--one of the most important of these old-time units was found to be in woefully shabby physical form. It was a valuable road in the consolidation. The new parent was willing to guarantee an annual rental of 10 per cent on its stock; but as a railroad it fairly shook at the knees. It stood in dire need of reconstruction, and the men who were offering it a high rental made that a provision of the deal. The old road finally agreed to spend $12,000,000 in revising its line and in buying new locomotives, cars, and bridges. With much ado it accomplished its revision, and brought itself up closer to modern standards of railroading. A decade later when the governmental supervision of the railroads had come into the full flush of its authority, the quiet vice-president had an armful of State commission reports and vouchers brought to his desk. He locked himself in his room, and in a week he had made from them a 20,000-word abstract in long hand. Then he took his report in to the president of the road. The acute mind of that general counsel--you see that he was vice-president in this particular case--searching here and there and everywhere, had discovered a mouse-hole. The old-time road had not fulfilled its part of the contract. It had found that it could revise its lines at a cost of a little less than $9,000,000 and had quietly pocketed the change. The big rent-paying consolidation went into the courts, after its cool, impassive way. The case went to a referee and the referee took four years to hear the case and decide it. There were 5,000 exhibits offered in evidence and 8,000 closely written pages of evidence, making a case nearly equal to that of the receivership of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company of New York City, which fills twenty pudgy volumes of some 800 pages each. The referee decided in favor of the parent company, and rendered a verdict close to $6,000,000, principal and interest. The case was appealed, and sustained. That vice-president had proved his worth. The president of the defendant road came to him. "We simply can't pay," he pleaded. "We've no reserve fund."