BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS Complete success attended a negotiation which I conducted about this time for Colonel William Phillips, president of the Allegheny Valley Railway at Pittsburgh.

One day the Colonel entered my New York office and told me that he needed money badly, but that he could get no house in America to entertain the idea of purchasing five millions of bonds of his company although they were to be guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

The old gentleman felt sure that he was being driven from pillar to post by the bankers because they had agreed among themselves to purchase the bonds only upon their own terms.

He asked ninety cents on the dollar for them, but this the bankers considered preposterously high.

Those were the days when Western railway bonds were often sold to the bankers at eighty cents on the dollar.
Colonel Phillips said he had come to see whether I could not suggest some way out of his difficulty.