Business & Finance: Nickel Plate

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Continued rumors in Wall Street and elsewhere concerning the Van Sweringen brothers and their plans for consolidating railroads were confirmed when it was announced that their leading road, the "Nickel Plate" (the New York, Chicago & St. Louis), had virtually acquired control of the Erie. The growth of the new Van Sweringen system, which has not yet reached its end, began by important consolidations under the Nickel Plate. Last February, Nickel Plate assumed control of the Chesapeake & Ohio. In the late Winter and Spring, the heavy buying of Erie on the Stock Exchange occasioned much comment. Evidently much of it was for the Van Sweringens. The next road due to be acquired, the story goes, is the Pere Marquette, and then perhaps the Virginian and the Pittsburgh & West Virginia.

This new "Nickel Plate system" which has grown up so rapidly, will extend from the Atlantic seaboard ports of New York, Newport News and Norfolk, to such important inland centers as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Charleston and Lynchburg.

If plans stated above are finally carried out, the system will be one of the greatest in the country, with a funded debt of $715,257,000, common and preferred stocks of $494,323,000, and in 1923 a gross revenue of $362,500,000.