Building The Virginian Railway - Page Still Willing To Negotiate

Page Still Willing To Negotiate

As the construction continued throughout 1905, Col. Page continued to meet with each of the big railroads to attempt to negotiate rates for the Deepwater Railway's coal, offering to stop construction on the Tidewater Railway, and/or perhaps sell off his fledging enterprise. The leaders of the C&O and N&W exchanged correspondence which has been preserved in company archives sharing their mutual concern about the "common enemy." To them, Page did not appear to be financially capable of the project and they were skeptical that the new Deepwater and Tidewater railroads could be financed and completed. After all, they reasoned, there had been no public offering of bonds or stock, which were the way such enterprises were customarily financed at the time. All across the United States, railroad projects had been started, and many had died for lack of funds. Perhaps, the Page enterprise would join such ranks.

Gambling on that premise, the two big railroads saw to it that the "negotiations" were always unproductive, and Col. Page always declined to indicate the source of his apparently "deep pockets." By this time, Page must surely have been enjoying his new found power in dealing with the arrogant big railroads. In fact, management of the funding Rogers was providing was handled by Boston financier Godfrey M. Hyams, with whom he had also worked on the Anaconda Company, and many other natural resource projects.