Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/297

winter, he had joined, upon urgent invitation, another committee, formed for the protection of the bondholders of the Kansas Pacific Railroad Company, which had been obliged by the severe crisis of that year to ask for the funding of two years interest on three classes of bonds, representing a total of $12,000,000, most of which were held in Germany. He was chosen the delegate of this committee to conclude the funding arrangement with the company in the United States. On reaching New York, he found a despatch from the financial agent, Koehler, at Portland, reporting that an open conflict had already broken out between him and Ben Holladay about the execution of the compromise contract. It turned out that the latter, both because of bad faith and because of inability from want of means to make certain cash payments for which he had personally obligated himself, had violated the contract in several respects, and, moreover, that he was unwilling and unable to carry it out at all. It was discouraging to Mr. Villard thus to have a whole year's hard work so quickly brought to naught, but he resolutely exerted himself to find a way out of the complicated situation that had been created. It being out of the question to conduct litigation for the enforcement of the bond holders' rights at a distance of 7000 miles from Germany, on account of the great inconvenience and expense and long delay, he devised another compromise plan, under which Holladay would, for a certain consideration involving but a small sacrifice on the part of Mr. Villard's employers, peacefully surrender the control not only of the Oregon & California Railroad, but of two other transportation companies. One of these was an unproductive railroad, the Oregon Central, running fifty miles south-westerly from Portland, and the other a line of steamers of the Oregon Steamship Company, running between Portland and San Francisco, which formed the only regular connection that Oregon had with the rest of the world. Holladay had obtained from the same syndicate of for-