“I never figured it out. Stock doesn’t always depend upon dividends altogether. I paid 750 for my Missouri Pacific—4,000 shares at that figure. You pay more for rubies than for diamonds and more for diamonds than for glass.”
Then the examination turned to the days just after the consolidation, and the witness was asked if there was any corporate action of the new company before the stock was turned over to him.
“All I know,” he said, “is that the stock of the new company was delivered.”
“Was the new company bound to carry out the Kansas Pacific obligations of this sort?”
“Well, I suppose it assumed the Kansas Pacific obligations.”
“Why were you not paid in Kansas Pacific consols instead of stock?”
“I suppose they preferred stock to bonds. I was clever to them and took stock.”
Another turn carried questions and answers to other differences in the accounts, but the commission got little light. “It’s safe to say the lawyers got the difference,” chuckled Mr. Gould, at the end of the set of questions. He had made large cash advances, at different times, to the Kansas Pacific to meet the floating debt, and very likely these would have to be counted in to explain matters in all cases. There was one point upon which the witness strongly insisted, and that was that all through the negotiations and transactions no class of people nor any particular holders of securities experienced any discrimination in their favor, as compared with the treatment given everybody else.
After the consolidation Mr. Gould said he had few transactions in Union Pacific branch lines. He had an interest in the Denver & South Park, however, a minority interest at first, but subsequently he bought the whole road from Governor Evans. “I’m showing you my whole hand,” he said, cheerfully, at the end of the catalogue of the branches. Of the Union Pacific’s legal expenses he knew of none which were not perfectly legal.
“Who were the road’s counsel in Washington?”