Villard at once emerged from this blind pool into a great railroad magnate, in a manner, to the eye of the general public, as miraculous as the springing forth of Minerva fully armed from the brain of Jupiter.
The stock of Northern Pacific advanced rapidly in price, and Villard and his friends were supposed to be accumulating millions with unprecedented celerity. Villard appeared to have realized all the financial dreams of Monte Cristo, and he was fast looming up into a proud and dangerous rival of Gould, Vanderbilt and Huntington.
He went forward with the building of the Northern Pacific road, which was finished two years after his success in capturing it through the medium of his blind pool. His phenomenal success induced him to enter largely into the extension of other investments. He became lavish in his personal expenses also, although he had formerly been accustomed to the closest economy in his mode of living, and he built a palace at Madison Avenue and Fiftieth street.
When seemingly on the highest tide of prosperity, Villard suddenly became embarrassed, and when an accounting of the cost of finishing the road was made, he was found to be away behind. There was a miscalculation of $20,000,000 somewhere. Villard explained it by declaring that the estimate of the engineers for finishing the road was $20,000,000, whereas the real cost reached $40,000,000.
For the $20,000,000 subscribed by the blind pool the subscribers received the stock of the Oregon & Transcontinental. This company had been organized to build branch lines to the Northern Pacific, as the charter of the latter did not permit it to build such lines.
This is the speculative history, in brief, of Mr. Villard from the time he took hold of the Oregon & California Railroad up to the juncture of his grand collapse. There were several incidents, however, of more than ordinary interest in his railroad history prior to the time he set his heart upon Northern Pacific. As a stock-waterer he had, probably, no superior, and was only equalled by Mr. George I. Seney, in that important department of railroad management. His methods in obtaining control of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and the Oregon Steamship Company amply illustrate his remarkable ability in this respect. When Villard proposed to purchase these two companies he had no money, but he had unlimited confidence in his own ability. He asked each company to give him an option to run a year for $100,000. They agreed to do this, and Villard forthwith consulted a number of capitalists, who came together and filed articles of incorporation of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, a consolidation of the two companies above-named. When this company, with such a high sounding name, was organized, it had no assets, and the prospects of acquiring any seemed exceedingly blue. The names of the incorporators were as follows: Henry Villard, James H. Fry, Artemus H. Holmes, Christian Bors, W. H. Starbuck and Charles E. Brotherton, all of the city and State of New York, and W. H. Corbett, C. N. Lewis, J. N. Dolph, Paul Schulze and N. Thielson, all of Portland, Oregon. The capital was nominally six million dollars, divided into 60,000 shares. This arrangement was made in June, 1879.
The next problem to be solved after the reorganization was how to raise money to run the concern.
The Board of Directors, under the management of Mr. Villard, were equal to the occasion. They met at Portland a few days after the organization and executed a mortgage to the Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company of New York, and under this mortgage issued 6,000 bonds of $1,000 each, payable in thirty years after July 1, 1879, with interest at 6 per cent.
Mr. Villard then paid the $100,000 bonus money to the companies which had been incorporated, took his option, stock and bonds and came East to negotiate his securities. It is said he presented them to Jay Gould, who refused to touch them, as he believed there was not much stamina in the scheme, and he wished to avoid trouble with the Northern Pacific, which he plainly saw the project involved. Villard was more fortunate with Mr. Endicott, Jr., of Boston, Mr. George Pullman and others whom they interested in the enterprise.
The property of the two companies, out of which the new company had been formed, whose securities were so boldly placed upon the market, was not in reality purchased until March of the following year.