Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/322

 close alliance between it and the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company. But President Billings rejected his advances, and would not even listen to his request for a small representation in the Northern Pacific board. Thereupon he offered to purchase the stock holdings of Mr. Billings and his fellow-directors, but this offer was also declined. The Northern Pacific directors, knowing that this would result in their displacement at the next annual election, then tried to fortify themselves by the sudden distribution of the $18,000,000 of common stock still in the treasury. Mr. Villard got wind of this and sued out an injunction against the issue. After some litigation, a compromise was effected. A new board of directors was agreed upon, with a majority of representatives of the Oregon & Transcontinental, and elected at the annual meeting in September, with Henry Villard as president, T. F. Oakes as first vice-president, and Anthony J. Thomas, an officer of the Oregon & Transcontinental Company, as second vice-president. Thus, in a little over two years from the birth of the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, Mr. Villard had assumed the burden of forging a new rail chain across the continent, twenty-seven hundred miles long, by connecting the existing links.

The new management considered its most important duty the pushing of the construction of the main line of the Northern Pacific with the utmost energy. It found a balance of no less than $34,000,000 from the sale of the $40,000,000 first-mortgage bonds available for this purpose. Yet, in spite of this seeming abundance, serious financial embarrassments arose during the first year of the new administration from two sources. In the first place, large expenditures were incurred for grading, bridging, and tunnelling at points in Montana, a long distance from the two ends of the track; but no money could be drawn from the building fund for outlays not resulting in finished road. Under the terms of the mortgage, the proceeds of the bonds became available only upon the completion and acceptance by the United States Government