Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/148

 132 finest standards, using the best Prussian steel, and the rolling stock was possibly the best in the country, yet the territory served was a revenue vacuum.

When Conrad Poppenhusen filed his judgment against the Southern and the North Side in September 1877, his creditors realized that the family fortune was gone at last. Drexel, Morgan & Co. and several smaller banks immediately filed as preferential creditors, and when Conrad realized that these might very well shut out the equally valid claims of his relatives and friends, he went into voluntary bankruptcy, and threw the whole matter into the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy courts. When the court opened hearings in November, it developed that there were only twenty-six creditors in all, and that only six of these had large claims:

Conrad's sole assets were two and a half million in notes made to the Long Island R.R. and almost four million in stock and bonds; of these nearly one million had already been pledged to Drexel, Morgan & Co. What the remaining securities would bring on the market was anybody's guess.

It was remarkable that both the press and his own creditors showed no rancor whatever against Conrad Poppenhusen. His prestige was so great and his personal nobility and utter honesty so universally respected, his public and private acts of beneficence and his public spirit so often demonstrated that his present fall excited nothing but compassion. His business acumen and patient industry had brought him to the top and it was sad to see the accumulation of thirty years of effort swept away, leaving him penniless in his old age.

In October 1877 the court, at the request of the creditors, placed the whole railroad system in receivership; since Drexel, Morgan & Co. were the major creditors of the road, the court