The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-30
OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
The New York, New Haven and Hart.
 ford.
(Hartford Courant. ]

(Hartford Courant.)
 The break in the price of the New York, New Haven & Hartford stock offers opportunity for good deal of meditation. Now that it has come. 1t is easy to account for. Every other independent stock on the list has dropped like lead. Great Northern Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, New York Central, St. Paul, and so on, and the tendency has for some time been downward. This is largely the result of tight money.
 The New York, New Haven & Hart ford with it's splendid credit had al-, ready been putting out obligations at wholesale--stock, debentures, bonds, short notes, at home and abroad
 When 0 call came for thirty odd mill Hons more the feeling spread that this would knock the stock and that feeling did knock 1t.
 ] It is easy to say that on sales of only about 2,)00 shares the rich men | on the inside of the company's af- | fairs could easily have picked up the offerings and held the price up That's true. But evidently they didn't want to. Insiders ir some concerns we are all familiar with would have dumped | their own shares first and then picked them up at the lower figures they an- | ticipated, These insiders simply look ed on. The inference Is that they, too
 entertain the common notion that there | is an experimental element in this great railroad.
 Any man would have been laughed | out of conversation who had at MT. Mellen's installation as president pre- dicted that within four years the bal
 ance sheet of the company then
 something, like $136,0o0,OOO, would be
 of guarantees, and that it would have the Ontario & Western, all the troll | leys in this State, most of those in
 Massachusetts the control of the Bos-
 ton & Maine, practical control of
 steam navigation in New England, an
 offer of the Boston & Albany the
 Poughkeepsie Bridge route, and all
 tho rest that goes to make up this amazing network of facilities. But
 to-day it has them and incidentally it
 has in the same period of this acqui-
 sition practically rebuilt and re,out- 1 fitted It's roadbed and rolling stock. 1 The thing now is to see the working
 out of this prodigious scheme--bigger
 than anything that New England ever
 saw before and involving not only | the financial life of the railroad but
 to very large degree the life of com
 mercial and manufacturing New Eng
 land. A mere glance at the situa- | tion suggests how much depends on
 MT. Mellen. He has thought this
 thing out, carried 1t across It's pre-
 liminary stages and got the strings in | hand. But these must be woven to- | gether and until that is accomplished l judgment as to the financial outcome
 must be more or less a matter of | guessing and personal confidence
 The refitting of the property with ! cars, engines and bridges and even
 the elaborate electric modification are | likely to receive universal approval. l The purchases of other properties,
 especially the trolleys, have been ac- | complished Ut prices so high that | holders could not resist selling. The wind d-and-water"s Connecticut propo- ] sition was a scandal and compelled
 the buying company to make fictitious millions earn real dollars out of the people of the State. This loss, per
 haps imposition, thus created in one
 part will be made good by benefits de- veloped elsewhere for which the pub
 lie are taxed not at all In time 1t will all work out, but It will take plans at this stage of development
 would probably mean their abandon ment and the collapse of the whole | gigantic project.
 An article in the Boston News Blu
 company would, if sold, pay back
 the capital and all the indebtedness,
 Its possessions are vast. Of course
 this talk about selling the real es-
 tate is inconsequential, for it is neces- sary to the road and it gets It's value from the road. But there it is.
 Meanwhile the project will be pushed along and Mir Mellen's reputation as 1 the biggest railroad man of his day or a costly dreamer will be established l in due time. Few of the vast econo-
 mics contemplated and arranged for have begun yet to get their work in. outcome Just see if he doesn't pull
 it through. It calls for time and
 money and both can be had.