WHO OWNS THE RAILROADS 333 



road, the annual report for 1899-1900 places the number of 

 shares of that company at 250,345, and the number of stock- 

 holders at 7,148. Of this number of stockholders 4,575, resid- 

 ing in Massachusetts, owned 124,030 shares; 1,515, residing 

 in New Hampshire, owned 29,212 shares; 599, residing in 

 Maine, owned 18,349 shares; 459, residing elsewhere, owned 

 60,678 shares, while 18,076 shares of common stock were owned 

 by the company itself. From this report it also appears that 

 approximately 7 per cent of the largest stockholders of the 

 company owned 26 per cent of the stock. 



Another illustration of the wide diffusion of stock owner- 

 ship in some of our great railways is afforded in the Atchison, 

 Topeka and Santa Fe railway. This road, the most important 

 of the southwestern roads, and the greatest of the " independ- 

 ent systems," has its capital stock of $233,468,000 distributed 

 among 13,147 stockholders. The two facts according to Mr. 

 Thomas F. Woodlock that distinguish this road from other 

 large western roads are: (1) "That alone of all transcontinental 

 lines it extends from Chicago to San Francisco," and (2) 

 "That there is no dominant stockholding interest or combi- 

 nation of interests in control of the property. . . . And it is 

 the only large system in the west that nobody in particular 

 owns or specially controls." According to Mr. Woodlock, 

 "the ownership of the Atchison road became thoroughly scat- 

 tered in the reorganization and afterwards." "I am credibly 

 informed," he writes, "that Messrs. Baring and the interest 

 known as the 'Berwind Pool' are at present the only examples 

 of concentrated ownership in the company, and that all three 

 combined are a relatively small percentage of the whole." 



Directing our attention next to an examination of the 

 distribution of the capital stock of railways other than those 

 just considered, reliance had to be placed upon the data fur- 

 nished by the latest available state railroad commission re- 

 ports, namely those of 1900 and 1901. In the following four 

 tables an attempt has been made to group this data. Table I. 

 includes those important railways whose stock is owned by a 

 large number of stockholders. Table II. presents those im- 

 portant railways whose number of stockholders is not un- 

 usually small, but where concentration in stockholding is ap- 



