Bondholders Take the Street Railway at a Courthouse Auction
The Rainier Power & Railway Company sells for $15,000, handing a troubled transit line to the men who held its debt.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Rainier Power & Railway Company was sold for $15,000 by Eben Smith, United States master in chancery, at the door of the King county court house yesterday morning. The sale was under decree of the United States circuit court, and the property was knocked down to the highest bidders. The proceedings were witnessed by a considerable number of people, comprising attorneys and persons directly interested in the sale.
As might have been anticipated, the successful bidders were Angus Mackintosh, A. M. Brookes and Frederick Bausman, the committee representing the bondholders, who had arranged the details of the reorganization. The effect of the sale will be to place the road and its entire equipment into the hands of the new company, and the bondholders will acquire stock in the manner indicated in Sunday's Post-Intelligencer.
“The Rainier Power & Railway Company was sold for $15,000 by Eben Smith, United States master in chancery, at the door of the King county court house yesterday morning.”
When a street-railway company failed in 1895, the bondholders took the road at a courthouse auction and reorganized it—a pattern familiar to anyone who has watched transit agencies or utilities restructure under financial stress. The sale also shows how private ownership of the city's early transit network concentrated control in the hands of creditors.
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