The committee duly reported a bill to the assembly to authorize the conversion of the scrip into stock. At the same time, a bill advanced to allow Vanderbilt to consolidate the Central with the Hudson River, to create a unified railroad from St. John's Park in Manhattan to the shores of Lake Erie. This second act would prove even more momentous than the enormous scrip dividend, for it would create a corporation on an unprecedented scale. Long envisioned as a practical matter (Dean Richmond had proposed the same thing years earlier), it promised to end the most troublesome fragmentation of the
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