Excerpt from Letter to the Railroad Securities Commission: In Reply to Their Request for Information and Opinions Upon Questions Pertaining to the Issuance of Stocks and Bonds of American RailwaysThe original Cost of material in place on any one railway, must be a definite sum although it is Seldom ascertainable with accuracy. While the aggregate cost may increase or decrease as ma terial is added or withdrawn, the original cost of any quantity or unit of material in place is per manent. It does not follow, however, that the original cost of material in place represents the cost to the present Owners of the property. They may have purchased the property from another company, and paid either more or less than the cost of material in place. The price paid in such a case is the resultant of many con ditions, including the necessities of the seller and the respective estimates Of the value tothemselves of the property made by both parties to the transaction, but the original cost can never be one of the controlling conditions. There are few existing railway companies (and these only the smaller ones) that do not' rep resent reorganizations following receiverships, or to a large extent the purchases Of properties of other companies and their subsequent merger or consolidation with the purchasing company, In view of these facts it is plain that there is no fixed necessary or common relation between the cost of material in place and the cost of the property to the present holders thereof.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.