Information about railroad reorganization must be gathered from a wide variety of sources. The most important are five in number. First, there are the annual reports of the railroads themselves. Second, there are the files of financial and railroad papers. Third, there are contemporaneous pamphlets. Fourth, there are memoirs and biographies containing first-hand material. And fifth, there are government documents, which comprise (1) regular reports by and testimony before bodies like the state and national railway commissions; (2) reports by and testimony taken before occasional committees; (3) legislative records; (4) state and federal court proceedings.

Of the five sources mentioned, the files of contemporary papers are the most useful. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, the Railroad Gazette, the Railway Age, the Railway and Engineering Review, the Railway Times of London, the New York Tribune, the New York Journal of Commerce, the Wall Street Journal, and many others are generally accurate and trustworthy, though it should be noted as a limitation that they seldom have inside information, and that their comment is not always independent. These papers are supplemented by pamphlets and circulars. Many reorganization plans are published in pamphlet form. Opposition to them is not infrequently thrown into the same shape. Reports of experts are printed in pamphlets. In general, the live literature of reorganization must be put out on short notice, and so is issued in this informal way. The official statistics of railroads are to be found in the reports of the railroad companies themselves, made to stockholders or to supervisory government bodies. These statistics, like the news items in the financial and railroad papers, must be used with care. They are sometimes incomplete, and they are sometimes purposely misleading. Nevertheless, they are useful, and serious inaccuracies in any of them are usually exposed within a few years after their original publication. The material to be found in legislative records is not abundant. Railroads almost invariably, however, appear before the courts in the course of their reorganizations, and in390 the decisions of these tribunals some facts of interest may be found. The records of the receivership of the union Pacific have been published in fourteen volumes. The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Pearsall vs. Great Northern729 blocked the first of the reorganization plans proposed for the Northern Pacific in 1895. An earlier decision730 enabled the union Pacific to postpone the payment of interest upon the public debt until the principal should have fallen due. The Erie has been at times almost continuously before the courts, and the same is true of the Reading during its reorganizations, of the Northern Pacific, and of other roads. The student is most fortunate when he can uncover testimony before government committees, of men who have taken part in reorganization proceedings, or who are personally acquainted with developments which have led up to railroad failures. Mr. Blanchard, before the Hepburn Committee,731 and Mr. Fink, before the Hepburn and the Cullom Committees,732 helped their hearers to understand the policy which finally resulted in the failure of the Baltimore & Ohio. The report of the Poland Committee disclosed the scandal of the Crédit Mobilier.733 The testimony of Gould, Adams, Ames, Holmes, and others before the United States Pacific Railroad Commission of 1887–88734 made clear the iniquity of the union Pacific reorganization of 1880. The statements of Mr. Pierce before the Senate Committee on Pacific Railroads in 1896735 explained the attitude of the union Pacific towards the repayment of that company’s debt to the Government. The testimony of Messrs. McLeod, Rice, Harris, and others before the Industrial Commission of 1900 threw much light upon the Reading bankruptcy of 1893. The arguments of counsel in the matter of export differentials, reprinted in the fifth volume of the Elkins Committee report,736 gave valuable information on the subject of trunk-line competition. Many of the witnesses before these committees are frank in criticism of the railroads with which they have been connected. Others are forced to admissions391 by the keen questioning to which they are exposed. The only similar material to be found elsewhere lies in memoirs, such as those of Henry Villard,737 or in biographies like Oberholtzer’s Life of Jay Cooke738 and Pearson’s An American Railroad Builder739 which make use of private papers of men prominent in railroad finance. Perhaps White’s Book of Daniel Drew,740 Depew’s Retrospect of Twenty-Five Years,741 and the Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens by his son,742 should be included in this class.

This enumeration, while in no way exhaustive, indicates the principal sources from which material may be obtained. Secondary works do not exist which treat solely of railroad reorganization. There is an article by E. S. Meade in t............