Arguments of James E. Gowen, Franklin B. Gowen, Geo. M. Robeson, and B. Williamson, Counsel for Defendants on the Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, in the Case of Dinsmore vs. the Railroad Co. et al; Delivered in the U.S. Circuit Court at Trento

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1884. Excerpt: ... ARGUMENT OF MR. FRANKLIN B. GOWEN, On Behalf Of The Defendants. If The Court Please: The complications of this case, the relative positions of the several parties to it, the various occurrences of the last three or four years brought into the cause, either in the bill, the answer, or the testimony taken under an order of the court, are such, that your Honor can not be expected to understand them all sufficiently to administer equity, and especially equity as distinguished from law, without either going to the trouble of reading over this great mass of testimony or listening to some succinct history of the case. This latter I propose to give, and I shall ask your Honor's careful attention to it, because many of the facts to be now stated will be referred to hereafter in my argument, and in the arguments of others who are to follow me in discussing such portions of the case as have not been touched upon by the counsel who preceded me upon our side. Your Honor doubtless knows, as we all do, the history of the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey in its prosperity, and your Honor probably knows that the great prosperity of the company was owing to the fact that at the western end of its main line it formed connections with two great systems of railroads in Pennsylvania, one known as the Lehigh Valley and the other as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, each developing large areas of anthracite coal lands and producing an enormous tonnage of anthracite coal. Both used the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey as their eastern terminus, and fed the latter, from Phillipsburg to the waters of New York Bay, with a large amount of the most profitable traffic. The Court: --Before the building of the Packer road? Mr. F. B. Gowen: --Yes; I am speaking of the time p...