the Metropolitan for $3,000,000. For two and a half miles of
railroad on Thirty-fourth Street, which represented a cash
expenditure of perhaps $100,000, they received $2,000,000 of
Metropolitan stock. But it is hardly necessary to catalogue more
instances; the plan of operations must now be fairly evident. It
was for the members of the syndicate, as individuals, to collect
all the properties and new franchises that were available and to
transfer them to the Metropolitan at enormously inflated values.
So far, all these deals were purely stock transactions--no cash
had yet changed hands. When the amalgamation was complete, the
insiders found themselves in possession of large amounts of
Metropolitan stock. Their scheme for transforming this paper into
more tangible property forms the concluding chapter of this
Metropolitan story.*

* In 1897 the Traction Company dissolved, after distributing
$6,000,000 as "a voluntary dividend" among its stockholders.


Nearly all the properties actually purchased and transferred in
the manner described above, had little earning capacity, and
therefore little value; they were decrepit horse-car lines in
unprofitable territory. The really valuable roads were those that
traversed the great north and south thoroughfares-Lenox, Third,
Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Avenues. Many old New York
families and estates had held these properties for years and had
collected large annual dividends from them. Naturally they had no
desire to sell, yet their acquisition was essential to the
monopoly which the Whitney-Ryan syndicate aspired to construct.
They finally leased all these roads, under agreements which