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HARVARD ECONOMIC STUDIES
Volume I: The English Patents of Monopoly, by William H. Price. 8vo,$1.50, net. Postage 17 cents.
Volume II: The Lodging-House Problem in Boston, by Albert B. Wolfe.8vo, $1.50, net. Postage 17 cents.
Volume III: The Stannaries; A study of the English Tin Miner, byGeorge R. Lewis. 8vo, $1.50, net. Postage 17 cents.
Volume IV: Railroad Reorganization, by Stuart Daggett. 8vo, $2.00,net. Postage 17 cents.
Volume V: Wool-Growing and the Tariff, by Chester W. Wright. 8vo,$2.00, net. Postage 17 cents.
Volume VI: Public Ownership of Telephones on the Continent of Europe,by Arthur N. Holcombe. 8vo, $2.00, net. Postage 17 cents.
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HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.
HARVARD ECONOMIC STUDIES
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
VOL. IV
RAILROAD
REORGANIZATION
BY
STUART DAGGETT, Ph.D.
INSTRUCTOR IN ECONOMICS IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1908
COPYRIGHT 1908 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published May 1908
PREFACE
It sometimes happens that experiences long since past seem tobe repeated, and that knowledge apparently forgotten provesagain of service. This is illustrated by the subject of railroadreorganization. In the years between 1893 and 1899 an imposing groupof American railroads passed into receivers’ hands. In 1893 alonemore than 27,000 miles, with an aggregate capitalization of almost$2,000,000,000, were taken over by the courts, and in the followingyears the amount was largely increased. Foreclosure sales aggregated10,446 miles in 1895, 12,355 in 1896, and 40,503 between 1894 and1898. Among the more important failures were those of the Richmond &West Point Terminal, the Reading, the Erie, the Northern Pacific, theAtchison, and the Baltimore & Ohio;—to say nothing of the Norfolk& Western, the Louisville, New Albany & Chicago, the Ann Arbor, theSeattle, Lake Shore & Eastern, the Pecos Valley, and many othersmaller lines.
The rai