WRONG WITHOUT REMEDY: A LEGAL SATIRE. VII.
THE RAILWAY LEASE. BY WALLACE McCxMANT. IX Western Pennsylvania there were two railway lines, which extended parallel with each other in the Alleghany Valley for one hundred and fifty miles. They were the Pittsburg and Northeastern and the Buf falo and Alleghany. They reached the same cities and competed for the same freight and passenger traffic. The officials of both reads felt the keenness of the competition and were persuaded that their profits would be larger if they were able to operate under one man agement. The Pittsburg Northeastern was the stronger of the two corporations, and its officials devoted themselves to the work of securing control of the rival line. One day, while Hamilton Anderson was in Philadelphia, he noticed by the paper that a charter had been granted at Harrisburg to a corporation under the name of the Alleghany and Northern Railway Company. Among its corporate powers named in the charter was that of building, buying, leasing, acquiring, maintaining and operating a line of railway and telegraph between Pittsburg and other points named in the Alleghany Valley. The charter was issued on the application of a lawyer whom Anderson knew to be a warm personal friend of the general attorney of the Pittsburg Northeastern. Anderson had long known of the competition between these two roads running northeasterly out of Pittsburg and he suspected that the granting of this charter looked in the direction of a control of one of these roads by the other. He im mediately wired his broker in New York to buy him a few shares of the stock of the Pitts burg Northeastern and a few additional shares of that of the Buffalo and Alleghany. He then went to Pittsburg to investigate. A
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man of high financial standing and great wealth has ways of finding out things which are unavoidable to the average man. Ander son, at any rate, succeeded in fathoming the plan by which the Pittsburg Northwestern proposed to control the rival road. The stock of the Alleghany and Northern Railway Company was held in trust for the Pittstmrg Northeastern. The Alleghany and Northern Railway Company was to lease the Buffalo and Alleghany for a term of ninetynine years at a rental sufficient to pay the interest on the bonds of the latter road and six per cent, in dividends on its stock. The Alleghany and Northern, being as yet a mere paper corporation, it had been found necessary for the Pittsburg Northeastern to guar antee the performance of its contract and the payment of the rentals called for by the lease. They had secured the consent of many of those who were interested in the Buffalo and Alleghany and were at work convincing the remaining stockholders that the lease was advantageous to them. They did not worry with small stockholders like Anderson, but when they had reached all the large interests represented in the Buffalo and Alleghany, they called their stockhoders' meeting and voted autority to the directors to execute the lease. Anderson was present and voted, "No." A few days later a suit in equity was started in the Alleghany Common Pleas and a preliminary injunction was issued restrain ing the Buffalo and Alleghany from execut ing the lease and the Pittsburg Northeastern from guaranteeing its performance by the lessee. Hamilton Anderson was plaintiff in the suit; he alleged that he was a stockholder
