The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-11-21

From the Financial Chronicle.
The old, old method of building a railroad
was for the subscribers to take either bonds
or stocks and pay for them full price-say
90 to 100 and then the outstanding liabilities
represented pretty nearly the capital invested,
and the bonds and stock became valuable &C
cording to the capacity of the road to earn in
terest or dividends. But this method is SO
old now that il savors Of the middle ages, and
little has been done on this basis since the
war.
Then came the plan by which the project
ors issued and sold enough bonds per mile to
build the road, and issued a like amount OF
stock, distributing the latter among them
prior to the panic of 1873, but SO heavily
charges on their bonds, sold at prices which
made them pay about 8 per cent per annum,
that few companies were able to survive when
the hard times came. Our readers may recall
those CHASTITY lists of railroads in default
which filled columns in the newspapers.
Before 1873 the CONSTRUCTION company"
had been little used, and the famous Credit
Mobilier of the Union Pacific, which WAS the
first of those companies to become prominent
in the United States, subsequently fell into
bad odor. But the construction company has
of late years been revived and very much
used Is ., Side corporation, first for the build
ing Of the road, and secondly for the distribu-
ton of the stock and bonds for the benefit of
its subscribers; and whether or not it did the
first part well, it has succeeded admirably in
the second.
The distribution of stock and income bonds
sometimes in very large amounts) to the sub
scribers for first mortgage bonds in ''blocks"
has been the popular method of late years,
and as between this and the 1870 72 plan of
keeping all the stock for the projectors, we
can not see why the latter is not the best.
One of the natural consequences of the issue
Of these large blocks of bonds aud stock to
subscribers is sometimes seen in the decline of
the bonds to very low prices before the rail-
roads are completed. The subscribers wish
ing to realize on something, and not finding a
ready market for their stocks, are apt to sell
their bonds at any price they may bring.
M. Gounod, the famous composer, related
the other day at the French institute, Paris,
his first impression of the opera, when, in e.,
at the age of thirteen he was taken to hear
Mozart's "Don Juan at the Italiens. The
simple promise beforehand that he should be
taken there sent such thrill of happiness
through him that he could neither eat nor
drink. any mother remarked it," he said,
land told me: You can't 60 to the opera if
you don't eat After such threat l would
have swallowed anything that might have
been placed before me. But on hearing the
sublime and terrible overture-how can des-
cribe it when even To-day, after fifty years Of
an increasing admiration, my heart
thrills to think of It, and my hand trembles in
writing about it All that | can remember is
that it seemed to me as if God was speaking
to me. fell into a sort of painfully delicious
prostration, and was half suffocated with emo
ton. 'Ah. mamma, T cried that is real mu-
Sic was literally overcome. =. ~.ary