new electric systems on the lines which they controlled by lease
or stock ownership. It seems a not unnatural suspicion that the
vanished Metropolitan books would have disclosed similar
performances in New York.

The concluding chapter of this tragedy has its setting in the
Stock Exchange. These inside gentlemen, as already said, received
no cash as their profits from these manipulations--only stock.
But in the eyes of the public this stock represented an enormous
value. Metropolitan securities, for example, represented the
control and ownership of all the surface transit business in the
city of New York. Naturally, it had a great investment value.
When it began to pay regularly seven per cent dividends, the
public appetite for Metropolitan became insatiable. The eager
purchasers did not know, what we know now, that the Metropolitan
did not earn these dividends and never could have earned them.
The mere fact that it was paying, as rentals on its leased lines,
annual sums far in excess of their earning capacity, necessarily
prevented anything in the nature of profitable operation. The
unpleasant fact is that these dividends were paid with borrowed
money merely to make the stock marketable. It is not unlikely
that the padded construction accounts, already described, may
have concealed large disbursements of money for unearned
dividends. When the Metropolitan was listed in 1897, it
immediately went beyond par. The excitement that followed forms
one of the most memorable chapters in the history of Wall Street.
The investing public, egged on by daring and skillful stock
manipulators, simply went mad and purchased not only Metropolitan
but street railway shares that were then even more speculative.
It was in these bubble days that Brooklyn Rapid Transit soared to