Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/321

  holder hereof for the use of the moneys for which this and like receipts are given on or before May 15, 1880, [sic] but not sooner, and that the holder hereof shall participate equally in all the profits and benefits of every description with all other persons in like interest in proportion to said contribution. This receipt is not transferable except with the written consent of the undersigned.

The promised accounting was postponed until June 24, when the subscribers met by invitation of Mr. Villard in his offices, and received for the first time full explanations of his plan to form a new company for the double object already explained. The project was so well received that his simultaneous invitation to subscribe $12,000,000 more was generally responded to. The new company was organized immediately in Oregon, under the name of the Oregon & Transcontinental Company, with an authorized capital stock of $50,000,000, of which $30,000,000 was issued and distributed among the subscribers for the $20,000,000 cash paid in.

This unique financial feat, without precedent or parallel, gained for Mr. Villard much of the kind of reputation which he least coveted. Wall Street dubbed it the "blind pool," and the newspaper exaggerations and fictions indulged in throughout the country regarding it gave him a most distasteful notoriety. The new corporation was the first of the companies, now called "proprietary," which have since become numerous. Its conception was considered by eminent bankers as a stroke of genius, and the belief in its practicability by men of the highest standing was evidenced by the composition of the company's board of directors and the list of stockholders. Yet the company was destined to prove a grievous disappointment and the greatest possible trial to its originator. Even before the purchasing syndicate was wound up, unexpected troubles were born with the new company. In forming it, the founder had no intention of ousting the existing management of the Northern Pacific, but only to bring about a