Show AFTERMATH OF A BOND ORGY that bonds are bunk is again proved by the disgraceful grac eaul culmination of the bond orgy which the chicago milwaukee and st paul railroad has been indulging in for the past twenty years says mining topics for may just two decades ago C M st P was looked upon much as santa fe is looked upon today big earnings stock selling at double par business increasing road bed and rolling stock in al A l 1 condition the last word in successful railroading then began a period of expansion and the bond bout was on instead of selling the par value of common stock still which could have been marketed for easily capital was raised by the now universal method of go gogg 1 ing into debt issue after issue of bonds were floated and the insiders never quit until they ran out of names wherewith to designate any new issue result in assets book value is plastered with money money value of bonds had the stock been sold and had no bonds been issued the interest saving alone would have paid 10 per cent on every share of the newly issued stock each year for 20 years such financing as the chec C M st P has done is however the method approved and exclusively utilized iby by the financial leaders of today the mere suggestion of any other method would be laughed to scorn worse than that if any other method is used and the user gets away with it on a sufficiently large lare scale he has incurred the enmity ot if modern barons of finance ignance and is due for a sojourn in in the donjon keep but just indulge in a bit of outer speculation as to what might have been suppose st paul has bas been so organized that it could assess its outstanding stock after selling all of its authorized capital it would have had approximately shares outstanding with a market value of over preferred was selling at and common at when it needed money it could have levied an assessment of anywhere from 1 to per share and it would have collected every nickel suppose that just 1 per share were assessed from time to time as fast as needed so long as stockholders and investors knew to a certainty that said one bone was going into constructive work with the object of assets and increasing earning power the market price of the stock would have suffered but little when the expansion process had been completed the market price would have advanced to a figure which would truly reflect the greater value of the companas comp anys assets if twenty years ago a iman held shares of st paul stock worth over would he kick on putting up now and then with an assurance that each he might contribute would add another or more to the value of his shares no he the share holder would not kick he would pay most gladly but what of the inside group who might hold a million shares probably hypothec bated to the banks because they were trying to run a on other peoples money even 1 assessments would mean a million at a crack to those birds and their credit at the banks was not good for it it is the insiders who have wrecked st paul and have gotten out from under without a single nick in their pocket books but the babas ba bas who were always willing to lie down and roll over over at the snap of an insiders finger 1 because he was a FINANCIER they the said babas ba bas are set back a good part of on account of worthless bonds and another on account of worthless stock talk about crooked and ill conceived mining finance if all the mining failures from the time of the king solomon queen of sheba pool to the present day were bunched they would look like a newsboys crap game alongside of the st paul trimming bee |