The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-04-27
NJ ANENY DECLINES
TO HELP SEIZE I.R.T.
Continued from First Page.

would be well to take over the LeXing-
ton avenue line. which would cost the
city about S105.000.000. The Mayor OBJ
served;
'If we had one OF these lines we could
give the people an object lesson as 10
how the city could run the subway as
compared with the Interboro method"
1t was learned that the Mayor had
not furnished TO District Attorney Ban
ton any evidence on which the latter
might base an action to have the In
terborough declared a public nuisance"
Only a formal acknowledgment of the
District Attorneys request for such evil
dence has been received by him.
marlborough total valuations OF $780,
600, coo on assets which Transit Com
mission experts has appraised at sl74,-
100000 are a Joke said Clarence j..
Shearn, chief counsel of the commission,
yesterday 81 hearing on the estimates.
Mr.. Shearn slashed the /. r. T. account
until II had shrunk like Debated toy
balloon.
Mr.. Shearn placed on the record the
story OF how the PETERBOROUGH had spent
sl4S00. 900 TO build the Brooklyn sub
way extension. though the contract price
was only $4,000, 900. He declared the
company had assumed deliberately a
loss or nearly s12.000.000 in the hope OF
keeping the Brooklyn Rapid Transit
Company out of Manhattan as an active
competitor, and that 1t is now trying
by swelling It's valuation sheets, to sad
die that difference on the city.
Dc Ford Approves Methods.
An important development Of the day
was the emphatic Endorsement OF the
Transit Commissions valuation methods
ty William A. De Ford, whom the city
has retained to protect its transit IN
terests Mr. De Ford said:
THE marlborough Company does not
own this property at all. 1t has no
physical property to sell to the city.
Ii has certain contract rights involving
use Of that property and that Is all u
has. But 1t has an equity in the prop
erty, an equitable interest to be con-
served in the property represented by
this investment In that physician prop
erty, title to which mas passed to the
city.
"They have an equipment amounting
TO between S34,000.000 and S40,0o0,o0o
under contracts Nos. l and 2, but for
the most part they do not own thr
property and they have none 10 sell.
They are not entitled to the benefit
of any increment up to the statutory
maximum, which would be cost of re-
production at present prices, less depre-
citation.
This commissions bureau Of valua-
tons has adopted the right principle
and that is to find out what the com-
pany has put into this property, what
they are equitably entitled to be repaid
for their investment and that is all. IL
is stuff and nonsense to put In all these
schedules"
Mr.. Shearn and Mr.. DeFord appeared
to be in perfect harmony when they
began to chop some of the nonsense"
out of the schedules. The S12,000,0O
claimed as a fair allowance for the
Belmont tunnel in the Queens extension,
they contended, could be quite properly
reduced to S4,000,000 at most. Judge
Shearn elected from one witness, T.. 81.
J. Gaynor, chief accountant for the In
terborough, an admission that the job
had been done at an inopportune time
and under extravagant conditions to en-
able the marlborough to save fran
chise that was about to expire. It's al
legged cost was vastly in excess of that
for the later tubes driven under the East
River.
Individual Items Cited.
The examiner tried. with only partial
success. to make the witness concede
that the accounts had been padded by
$4,3S6,S36 in high discounts for the sale
Of securities. Ut atsaQsppeared that an
item Of $1,30o,600 for .contractuai ex-
penses" had been translated into 1929
figures by the Interborough appraisers
and set down at s2.357 .000--neary dou-
Bile. This item included $4,000 ex-
pended for souvenir program books"
printed to commemorate the subway
opening, and also s25o,000 paid to Au-
gust Belmont & Co. for floating S10,-
600, 900 bond issue.
A claim for s1.462.0o0 against the city
was said to cover an alleged loss sus-
tanned by the marlborough Construction