Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/165

 Illinois, Missouri and Iowa; its capital stock was increased between 1877 and 1883 from $40,000,000 to $50,174,700; its funded or mortgaged debt was increased during the same period from $20,311,570.60 to $76,394,075; three quarterly 'dividends' were paid on the entire preferred stock in 1881—the year after the issue of the general mortgage in 1880—amounting to $1,036,529; within two years and a half after these 'dividends' the company made default on the interest of all its mortgaged debt; in May, 1884, the entire property was, on the application of the debtor company alone, secretly placed in the hands of Humphreys and Tutt, two of its former directors and officers, men without any special qualifications for railroad management, and who had been part of the directorate which had brought the system to bankruptcy; immediately after the appointment of Humphreys and Tutt, the Circuit Court of the eastern district of Missouri directed the issue of $2,300,000 of receiver's obligations to 'protect' the indorsements of Wabash notes by Gould, Dillon, Sage and Humphreys; the same court, six days later, directed the further issue of $2,000,000 of receivers' certificates—made a first lien on all the Wabash property—to pay so-called Wabash indebtedness, which by the terms of its lease to the Iron Mountain, which had been, in turn, leased to the Missouri Pacific, was the indebtedness of the Missouri Pacific; as the result of two years and a half of this receivership, there was paid out of the receivers' earnings, on account of liabilities incurred prior to the receivership, $3,260,