know what you did when you drew up the papers of the Metropolitan
Traction Company? You made us a great big tin box."

The plan which Whitney and his associates now followed was to
obtain control, in various ways, of all the surface railways in
New York and place them under the leadership of the Metropolitan.
Through their political influences they obtained franchises of
priceless value, organized subsidiary street railway companies,
and exchanged the stock of these subsidiary companies for that of
the Metropolitan. A few illustrations will show the character of
these transactions. They thus acquired, practically as a free
gift, a franchise to build a cable railroad on Lexington Avenue.
At an extremely liberal estimate, this line cost perhaps
$2,500,000 to construct, yet the syndicate turned this over to
the Metropolitan for $10,000,000 of Metropolitan securities. They
similarly acquired a franchise for a line on Columbus Avenue,
spending perhaps $500,000 in construction, and handing the
completed property over to the Metropolitan for $6,000,000. In
exchange for these two properties, representing a real
investment, it has been maintained, of $3,000,000, the inside
syndicates received securities which had a face value of
$16,000,000 and which, as will appear subsequently, had a market
cash value of not far from $25,000,000. They purchased an old
horse-car line on Fulton Street, a line whose assets consisted of
one-third of a mile of tracks, ten little box cars, thirty
horses, and an operating deficit of $40,000 a year. At auction,
its visible assets might have brought $15,000; yet the syndicate
turned this over to the Metropolitan for $1,000,000. They spent
$50,000 in constructing and equipping a horse railroad on
Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets and turned this over to