Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/347

 He found the Northern Pacific in serious financial embarrassment, mainly owing to the excess, over estimates, of the cost of building the extension of the main line over the Cascade range to Puget Sound, as well as to the approaching maturity of the preferred-stock dividend scrip issued in 1882, and to the adoption of a badly conceived plan for the construction of a number of branch lines to mining camps in Montana. From these causes a large floating debt had accrued, measures for the funding of which were urgent. Against his advice, the board voted to issue, for this purpose and the current requirements, twelve millions of bonds under a third general mortgage. He considered this issue altogether too small, and advocated the creation of a large consolidated mortgage for present and future wants, but was outvoted. He took, however, most of the new bonds for his German friends, who placed them in their home market. Next, he thought out a scheme for the formation of a new company that would absorb all the Montana branches and issue uniform bonds at a fixed rate against them all. It was approved by the board and carried out in the following summer. Mr. Villard took all the branch bonds that could be issued for Germany, but resold them at a large advance in this country.

Mr. Villard took a strong interest in electric lighting from its earliest stages. He was one of the first stockholders and a director of the original Edison Light Company, which had acquired the patents for the incandescent lamp. His faith in the incalculable value of the invention was, like that of most of his fellow-stockholders, so great that he did not dispose of his holdings even when the shares, on the par value of one hundred dollars of which only thirty per cent. had been paid in, rose to four thousand. In Berlin he had become acquainted with Werner Siemens, the eminent German discoverer and inventor in the electrical field, and head of the great firm of Siemens & Halske, and also with the parties managing and controlling the General Electricity Company of Berlin, which has since