Evansville daily journal. (Evansville, Ind.) 1863-1866, 1866-01-30

| present cost, and built very cheaply too
cost more than million and quarter o
dollars The Ohio & Mississippi Rail
road, which has never yet been eithel
fenced or finished entirely, and built. too
at a time when Railroad building wa
cheap, has cost, one mile with another
a price ranging between $50, 900 anC
100000 per mile, or minimum cost o
a million of dollars for every twelve
miles of road between Cincinnati anc
st. Louis. And in,the face of these fig
ures Col. Jones tells you, and believes j
himself. whilst rails are 800 per ton
passenger coaches costing from 30, ,OOC
| to 5000 each, and locomotives from
$l8. 600 to 500, 1000 each, and bridges
from $50 to $50 per foot of length, to
only hand bis clients $50, GOO Evans
vile city bonds, to be applied on an old
debt and-presto-they will hand you
over ffty-five miles Of broad guage Rail.
road completed and equipped. In all
candor, the Coils statement, in this be-
half are well calculated to lead bis old
friends to fear that, like Tony Lum-
kin in the play, he has not arrived at the
years of discression, and never will.
Col. Jones relies both upon subscrip-
tions in the country, along the line Of
this road, and upon mortgage bonds to
be issued upon. his road. Why not first
get a handsome cash subscription by
those most interested in the road, and
living along its line The fact that this
is not done, If any proof were wanted,
is conclusive evidence against its possi-
bility to any available extent.
There never has been time, as all
railroad builders we'll know, since Col.
Jones' coadjutor, Willard Carpenter,
made his utter failure to find market
for bonds on this same road, first in New
York and then in Earope, that such bonds
could be sold for fifty cents on the dol
lar. Ever since the general brea < down
in Western railroad credit, which occur
red simultaneously with the breaking
down of the original Straight Line pro-
iect, and which was brought about by
just such operations as that concern ex~
hibited, there never has been o time
when. the 6rst mortgage bonds of fifty-
five miles ofroad so situated could have
been sold. for fifty cents onathe dollar.
Since the aforesaid break dowHof West
ern railroad credit, men who have had
money to invest in railroad securities
have taken the precaution, when not fully
acquainted with the railroad Offering
boads for sale, to consult headquarters, n
the leading capitals Of this country and
Europe, where they can always get re-
liable information. In these capitals,
the leading banking houses, acting. as
agents for the purchase and sale of rail-
road securities, and collecting interest
upon them, keep the latest railroad
maps, the american Railroad J6s1=5T:ts;gl.
and other railroad publications, and
they are the men who are Ecopsulted
when new securities are thrown on the
market; and unless a railroad bond is
beyond controversy, solvent, converti
BILE security, it is no longer touched by
honest men. No man could offer
bonds of this Straight Line for sale in
New York, without having the whole
history of the enterprise thrown up to
him, and if that was no. Done, a. aglance
at the map, with very slight kuowl
edge Of Indiana railroad history, would,
at once settle the. question against the
bonds. In addition TO this. the holders
of the bonds of the Evansville and
CraWfordsYille Railroad are all over the
East, and in every country in Europe,
and have their agents amongst the
bankers of every capit@.L All these
men won d spot the bonds Of the rival
line. Under all these disadvantages,
when ] say such bonds could not be
sold for fifty cents ON the dollar,
! do not tell more than half
the truth. have no hesitation I'M saying
that they could not be sold at all at any
price which an honest man or company
would be willing to take for them. In
deed, the utter failure of Mr.. Carpenter
when he went to New York with his
trunk full of city bonds, real estate
bonds, and frat mortgage railroad
bonds, when rails were cheap compared
with present prices, and railroad bonds
were worth more than now, to find a
market for some of them, and his utter
inability to get rails with all the advan-
tages he then possessed, is conclusive
evidence of the worthlessness of such
| bonds ut the present time, aud of the
utter impossibiIity of this new company
to build the road with or without these
city bonds. No Indiana railroad has
essr yet been built without the sale of
bonds to the extent of~from about $l0,- !
600 to q much larger amount per mile.
Shall this broad guage concern be an
excep,ion2 If ever. it were possible to
sell $4,000 per mile of its first mort
gage bonds at the old rates for solvent
bonds, say from seventy FIVE to eighty.
Eve cents on the dollar it would still be
impossible, at present prices, to
complete and equip this road in
the cheapest style, with all the other
money that such a company could beg
or borrow, the city bonds included bnt
the sale Of bonds being utterly out Of
the question, where does Col Jones
stand, fnancially2 He is, willingly or
unwittiugly, foisting theapiivste indi.
yidual of these birds Of i'll omen
who have preyed for years upon the car
csss of dead railroad project, and who
now claim this city bond subscription as
q part of that carcass-upon the tax
payers of Evansville as public cause.
He is laboring in season and out of sea
son, it must be unWittingly, to elevate
a private speculation of other men, into
whose secrets he is only half initiated,
into the Importance and dignity of q
| public interest, and has persuaded the
City Council to order a vote of the citi-
zens upon it,, Should that vote result in
extracting these bonds from the city,
would not stand IN his shoes twelve
months hsncs for double the amount of
the proposed subscription.
3TaH Very Respectfully,
IL # avs 80 lars T~--ru T.