________________________________________________
_ Whatever his momentary satisfaction in her friendly acceptance of
his confession, the uncertain attitude of Berenice left Cowperwood
about where he was before. By a strange stroke of fate Braxmar,
his young rival, had been eliminated, and Berenice had been made
to see him, Cowperwood, in his true colors of love and of service
for her. Yet plainly she did not accept them at his own valuation.
More than ever was he conscious of the fact that he had fallen
in tow of an amazing individual, one who saw life from a distinct
and peculiar point of view and who was not to be bent to his will.
That fact more than anything else--for her grace and beauty merely
emblazoned it--caused him to fall into a hopeless infatuation.
He said to himself over and over, "Well, I can live without her
if I must," but at this stage the mere thought was an actual stab
in his vitals. What, after all, was life, wealth, fame, if you
couldn't have the woman you wanted--love, that indefinable,
unnamable coddling of the spirit which the strongest almost more
than the weakest crave? At last he saw clearly, as within a
chalice-like nimbus, that the ultimate end of fame, power, vigor
was beauty, and that beauty was a compound of the taste, the
emotion, the innate culture, passion, and dreams of a woman like
Berenice Fleming. That was it: that was it. And beyond was nothing
save crumbling age, darkness, silence.
In the mean time, owing to the preliminary activity and tact of
his agents and advisers, the Sunday newspapers were vying with one
another in describing the wonders of his new house in New York--its
cost, the value of its ground, the wealthy citizens with whom the
Cowperwoods would now be neighbors. There were double-column
pictures of Aileen and Cowperwood, with articles indicating them
as prospective entertainers on a grand scale who would unquestionably
be received because of their tremendous wealth. As a matter of
fact, this was purely newspaper gossip and speculation. While the
general columns made news and capital of his wealth, special society
columns, which dealt with the ultra-fashionable, ignored him
entirely. Already the machination of certain Chicago social figures
in distributing information as to his past was discernible in the
attitude of those clubs, organizations, and even churches, membership
in which constitutes a form of social passport to better and higher
earthly, if not spiritual, realms. His emissaries were active
enough, but soon found that their end was not to be gained in a
day. Many were waiting locally, anxious enough to get in, and
with social equipments which the Cowperwoods could scarcely boast.
After being blackballed by one or two exclusive clubs, seeing his
application for a pew at St. Thomas's quietly pigeon-holed for the
present, and his invitations declined by several multimillionaires
whom he met in the course of commercial transactions, he began to
feel that his splendid home, aside from its final purpose as an
art-museum, could be of little value.
At the same time Cowperwood's financial genius was constantly being
rewarded by many new phases of materiality chiefly by an offensive
and defensive alliance he was now able to engineer between himself
and the house of Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. Seeing the iron
manner in which he had managed to wrest victory out of defeat after
the first seriously contested election, these gentlemen had
experienced a change of heart and announced that they would now
gladly help finance any new enterprise which Cowperwood might
undertake. Among many other financiers, they had heard of his
triumph in connection with the failure of American Match.
"Dot must be a right cleffer man, dot Cowperwood," Mr. Gotloeb
told several of his partners, rubbing his hands and smiling. "I
shouldt like to meet him."
And so Cowperwood was manoeuvered into the giant banking office,
where Mr. Gotloeb extended a genial hand.
"I hear much of Chicawkgo," he explained, in his semi-German,
semi-Hebraic dialect, "but almozd more uff you. Are you goink to
swallow up all de street-railwaiss unt elefated roats out dere?"
Cowperwood smiled his most ingenuous smile.
"Why? Would you like me to leave a few for you?"
"Not dot exzagly, but I might not mint sharink in some uff dem wit
you."
"You can join with me at any time, Mr. Gotloeb, as you must know.
The door is always very, very wide open for you."
"I musd look into dot some more. It loogs very promising to me.
I am gladt to meet you."
The great external element in Cowperwood's financial success--and
one which he himself had foreseen from the very beginning--was the
fact that Chicago was developing constantly. What had been when
he arrived a soggy, messy plain strewn with shanties, ragged
sidewalks, a higgledy-piggledy business heart, was now truly an
astounding metropolis which had passed the million mark in population
and which stretched proud and strong over the greater part of Cook
County. Where once had been a meager, makeshift financial section,
with here and there only a splendid business building or hotel or
a public office of some kind, there were now canon-like streets
lined with fifteen and even eighteen story office buildings, from
the upper stories of which, as from watch-towers, might be surveyed
the vast expanding regions of simple home life below. Farther out
were districts of mansions, parks, pleasure resorts, great worlds
of train-yards and manufacturing areas. In the commercial heart
of this world Frank Algernon Cowperwood had truly become a figure
of giant significance. How wonderful it is that men grow until,
like colossi, they bestride the world, or, like banyan-trees, they
drop roots from every branch and are themselves a forest--a forest
of intricate commercial life, of which a thousand material aspects
are the evidence. His street-railway properties were like a
net--the parasite Gold Thread--linked together as they were, and
draining two of the three important "sides" of the city.
In 1886, when he had first secured a foothold, they had been
capitalized at between six and seven millions (every device for
issuing a dollar on real property having been exhausted). To-day,
under his management, they were capitalized at between sixty and
seventy millions. The majority of the stock issued and sold was
subject to a financial device whereby twenty per cent. controlled
eighty per cent., Cowperwood holding that twenty per cent. and
borrowing money on it as hypothecated collateral. In the case of
the West Side corporation, a corporate issue of over thirty millions
had been made, and these stocks, owing to the tremendous carrying
power of the roads and the swelling traffic night and morning of
poor sheep who paid their hard-earned nickels, had a market value
which gave the road an assured physical value of about three times
the sum for which it could have been built. The North Chicago
company, which in 1886 had a physical value of little more than a
million, could not now be duplicated for less than seven millions,
and was capitalized at nearly fifteen millions. The road was
valued at over one hundred thousand dollars more per mile than the
sum for which it could actually have been replaced. Pity the poor
groveling hack at the bottom who has not the brain-power either
to understand or to control that which his very presence and
necessities create.
These tremendous holdings, paying from ten to twelve per cent. on
every hundred-dollar share, were in the control, if not in the
actual ownership, of Cowperwood. Millions in loans that did not
appear on the books of the companies he had converted into actual
cash, wherewith he had bought houses, lands, equipages, paintings,
government bonds of the purest gold value, thereby assuring himself
to that extent of a fortune vaulted and locked, absolutely secure.
After much toiling and moiling on the part of his overworked legal
department he had secured a consolidation, under the title of the
Consolidated Traction Company of Illinois, of all outlying lines,
each having separate franchises and capitalized separately, yet
operated by an amazing hocus-pocus of contracts and agreements in
single, harmonious union with all his other properties. The North
and West Chicago companies he now proposed to unite into a third
company to be called the Union Traction Company. By taking up the
ten and twelve per cent. issues of the old North and West companies
and giving two for one of the new six-per-cent one-hundred-dollar-share
Union Traction stocks in their stead, he could satisfy the current
stockholders, who were apparently made somewhat better off thereby,
and still create and leave for himself a handsome margin of nearly
eighty million dollars. With a renewal of his franchises for twenty,
fifty, or one hundred years he would have fastened on the city of
Chicago the burden of yielding interest on this somewhat fictitious
value and would leave himself personally worth in the neighborhood
of one hundred millions.
This matter of extending his franchises was a most difficult and
intricate business, however. It involved overcoming or outwitting
a recent and very treacherous increase of local sentiment against
him. This had been occasioned by various details which related
to his elevated roads. To the two lines already built he now added
a third property, the Union Loop. This he prepared to connect not
only with his own, but with other outside elevated properties,
chief among which was Mr. Schryhart's South Side "L." He would
then farm out to his enemies the privilege of running trains on
this new line. However unwillingly, they would be forced to avail
themselves of the proffered opportunity, because within the region
covered by the new loop was the true congestion--here every one
desired to come either once or twice during the day or night. By
this means Cowperwood would secure to his property a paying interest
from the start.
This scheme aroused a really unprecedented antagonism in the breasts
of Cowperwood's enemies. By the Arneel-Hand-Schryhart contingent
it was looked upon as nothing short of diabolical. The newspapers,
directed by such men as Haguenin, Hyssop, Ormonde Ricketts, and
Truman Leslie MacDonald (whose father was now dead, and whose
thoughts as editor of the Inquirer were almost solely directed
toward driving Cowperwood out of Chicago), began to shout, as a
last resort, in the interests of democracy. Seats for everybody
(on Cowperwood's lines), no more straps in the rush hours, three-cent
fares for workingmen, morning and evening, free transfers from all
of Cowperwood's lines north to west and west to north, twenty per
cent. of the gross income of his lines to be paid to the city.
The masses should be made cognizant of their individual rights and
privileges. Such a course, while decidedly inimical to Cowperwood's
interests at the present time, and as such strongly favored by the
majority of his opponents, had nevertheless its disturbing elements
to an ultra-conservative like Hosmer Hand.
"I don't know about this, Norman," he remarked to Schryhart, on
one occasion. "I don't know about this. It's one thing to stir
up the public, but it's another to make them forget. This is a
restless, socialistic country, and Chicago is the very hotbed and
center of it. Still, if it will serve to trip him up I suppose
it will do for the present. The newspapers can probably smooth
it all over later. But I don't know."
Mr. Hand was of that order of mind that sees socialism as a horrible
importation of monarchy-ridden Europe. Why couldn't the people
be satisfied to allow the strong, intelligent, God-fearing men of
the community to arrange things for them? Wasn't that what democracy
meant? Certainly it was--he himself was one of the strong. He
could not help distrusting all this radical palaver. Still,
anything to hurt Cowperwood--anything.
Cowperwood was not slow to realize that public sentiment was now
in danger of being thoroughly crystallized against him by newspaper
agitation. Although his franchises would not expire--the large
majority of them--before January 1, 1903, yet if things went on
at this rate it would be doubtful soon whether ever again he would
be able to win another election by methods legitimate or illegitimate.
Hungry aldermen and councilmen might be venal and greedy enough
to do anything he should ask, provided he was willing to pay enough,
but even the thickest-hided, the most voracious and corrupt
politician could scarcely withstand the searching glare of publicity
and the infuriated rage of a possibly aroused public opinion. By
degrees this last, owing to the untiring efforts of the newspapers,
was being whipped into a wild foam. To come into council at this
time and ask for a twenty-year extension of franchises not destined
to expire for seven years was too much. It could not be done.
Even suborned councilmen would be unwilling to undertake it just
now. There are some things which even politically are impossible.
To make matters worse, the twenty-year-franchise limit was really
not at all sufficient for his present needs. In order to bring
about the consolidation of his North and West surface lines, which
he was now proposing and on the strength of which he wished to
issue at least two hundred million dollars' worth of
one-hundred-dollar-six-per-cent. shares in place of the seventy
million dollars current of ten and twelve per cents., it was
necessary for him to secure a much more respectable term of years
than the brief one now permitted by the state legislature, even
providing that this latter could be obtained.
"Peeble are not ferry much indrested in tees short-time frangizes,"
observed Mr. Gotloeb once, when Cowperwood was talking the matter
over with him. He wanted Haeckelheimer & Co. to underwrite the
whole issue. "Dey are so insigure. Now if you couldt get, say,
a frangize for fifty or one hunnert years or something like dot
your stocks wouldt go off like hot cakes. I know where I couldt
dispose of fifty million dollars off dem in Cermany alone."
He was most unctuous and pleading.
Cowperwood understood this quite as well as Gotloeb, if not better.
He was not at all satisfied with the thought of obtaining a
beggarly twenty-year extension for his giant schemes when cities
like Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Pittsburg were apparently
glad to grant their corporations franchises which would not expire
for ninety-nine years at the earliest, and in most cases were given
in perpetuity. This was the kind of franchise favored by the great
moneyed houses of New York and Europe, and which Gotloeb, and even
Addison, locally, were demanding.
"It is certainly important that we get these franchises renewed
for fifty years," Addison used to say to him, and it was seriously
and disagreeably true.
The various lights of Cowperwood's legal department, constantly
on the search for new legislative devices, were not slow to grasp
the import of the situation. It was not long before the resourceful
Mr. Joel Avery appeared with a suggestion.
"Did you notice what the state legislature of New York is doing
in connection with the various local transit problems down there?"
asked this honorable gentleman of Cowperwood, one morning, ambling
in when announced and seating himself in the great presence. A
half-burned cigar was between his fingers, and a little round felt
hat looked peculiarly rakish above his sinister, intellectual,
constructive face and eyes.
"No, I didn't," replied Cowperwood, who had actually noted and
pondered upon the item in question, but who did not care to say
so. "I saw something about it, but I didn't pay much attention
to it. What of it?"
"Well, it plans to authorize a body of four or five men--one branch
in New York, one in Buffalo, I presume--to grant all new franchises
and extend old ones with the consent of the various local communities
involved. They are to fix the rate of compensation to be paid to
the state or the city, and the rates of fare. They can regulate
transfers, stock issues, and all that sort of thing. I was
thinking if at any time we find this business of renewing the
franchises too uncertain here we might go into the state legislature
and see what can be done about introducing a public-service
commission of that kind into this state. We are not the only
corporation that would welcome it. Of course, it would be better
if there were a general or special demand for it outside of
ourselves. It ought not to originate with us."
He stared at Cowperwood heavily, the latter returning a reflective
gaze.
"I'll think it over," he said. "There may be something in that."
Henceforth the thought of instituting such a commission never left
Cowperwood's mind. It contained the germ of a solution--the
possibility of extending his franchises for fifty or even a hundred
years.
This plan, as Cowperwood was subsequently to discover, was a thing
more or less expressly forbidden by the state constitution of
Illinois. The latter provided that no special or exclusive
privilege, immunity, or franchise whatsoever should be granted to
any corporation, association, or individual. Yet, "What is a
little matter like the constitution between friends, anyhow?" some
one had already asked. There are fads in legislation as well as
dusty pigeonholes in which phases of older law are tucked away and
forgotten. Many earlier ideals of the constitution-makers had
long since been conveniently obscured or nullified by decisions,
appeals to the federal government, appeals to the state government,
communal contracts, and the like--fine cobwebby figments, all, but
sufficient, just the same, to render inoperative the original
intention. Besides, Cowperwood had but small respect for either
the intelligence or the self-protective capacity of such men as
constituted the rural voting element of the state. From his lawyers
and from others he had heard innumerable droll stories of life in
the state legislature, and the state counties and towns--on the
bench, at the rural huskings where the state elections were won,
in country hotels, on country roads and farms. "One day as I was
getting on the train at Petunkey," old General Van Sickle, or Judge
Dickensheets, or ex-Judge Avery would begin--and then would follow
some amazing narration of rural immorality or dullness, or political
or social misconception. Of the total population of the state at
this time over half were in the city itself, and these he had
managed to keep in control. For the remaining million, divided
between twelve small cities and an agricultural population, he had
small respect. What did this handful of yokels amount to, anyhow?
--dull, frivoling, barn-dancing boors.
The great state of Illinois--a territory as large as England proper
and as fertile as Egypt, bordered by a great lake and a vast river,
and with a population of over two million free-born Americans
--would scarcely seem a fit subject for corporate manipulation and
control. Yet a more trade-ridden commonwealth might not have been
found anywhere at this time within the entire length and breadth
of the universe. Cowperwood personally, though contemptuous of
the bucolic mass when regarded as individuals, had always been
impressed by this great community of his election. Here had come
Marquette and Joliet, La Salle and Hennepin, dreaming a way to the
Pacific. Here Lincoln and Douglas, antagonist and protagonist of
slavery argument, had contested; here had arisen "Joe" Smith,
propagator of that strange American dogma of the Latter-Day Saints.
What a state, Cowperwood sometimes thought; what a figment of the
brain, and yet how wonderful! He had crossed it often on his way
to St. Louis, to Memphis, to Denver, and had been touched by its
very simplicity--the small, new wooden towns, so redolent of
American tradition, prejudice, force, and illusion. The white-steepled
church, the lawn-faced, tree-shaded village streets, the long
stretches of flat, open country where corn grew in serried rows
or where in winter the snow bedded lightly--it all reminded him a
little of his own father and mother, who had been in many respects
suited to such a world as this. Yet none the less did he hesitate
to press on the measure which was to adjust his own future, to
make profitable his issue of two hundred million dollars' worth
of Union Traction, to secure him a fixed place in the financial
oligarchy of America and of the world.
The state legislature at this time was ruled over by a small group
of wire-pulling, pettifogging, corporation-controlled individuals
who came up from the respective towns, counties, and cities of the
state, but who bore the same relation to the communities which
they represented and to their superiors and equals in and out of
the legislative halls at Springfield that men do to such allies
anywhere in any given field. Why do we call them pettifogging and
dismiss them? Perhaps they were pettifogging, but certainly no
more so than any other shrewd rat or animal that burrows its way
onward--and shall we say upward? The deepest controlling principle
which animated these individuals was the oldest and first, that
of self-preservation. Picture, for example, a common occurrence
--that of Senator John H. Southack, conversing with, perhaps,
Senator George Mason Wade, of Gallatin County, behind a legislative
door in one of the senate conference chambers toward the close of
a session--Senator Southack, blinking, buttonholing his well-dressed
colleague and drawing very near; Senator Wade, curious, confidential,
expectant (a genial, solid, experienced, slightly paunchy but
well-built Senator Wade--and handsome, too).
"You know, George, I told you there would be something eventually
in the Quincy water-front improvement if it ever worked out. Well,
here it is. Ed Truesdale was in town yesterday." (This with a
knowing eye, as much as to say, "Mum's the word.") "Here's five
hundred; count it."
A quick flashing out of some green and yellow bills from a vest
pocket, a light thumbing and counting on the part of Senator Wade.
A flare of comprehension, approval,gratitude, admiration, as
though to signify, "This is something like." "Thanks, John. I
had pretty near forgot all about it. Nice people, eh? If you see
Ed again give him my regards. When that Bellville contest comes
up let me know."
Mr. Wade, being a good speaker, was frequently in request to stir
up the populace to a sense of pro or con in connection with some
legislative crisis impending, and it was to some such future
opportunity that he now pleasantly referred. O life, O politics,
O necessity, O hunger, O burning human appetite and desire on every
hand!
Mr. Southack was an unobtrusive, pleasant, quiet man of the type
that would usually be patronized as rural and pettifogging by men
high in commercial affairs. He was none the less well fitted to
his task, a capable and diligent beneficiary and agent. He was
well dressed, middle-aged,--only forty-five--cool, courageous,
genial, with eyes that were material, but not cold or hard, and a
light, springy, energetic step and manner. A holder of some C.
W. & I. R.R. shares, a director of one of his local county banks,
a silent partner in the Effingham Herald, he was a personage in
his district, one much revered by local swains. Yet a more game
and rascally type was not to be found in all rural legislation.
It was old General Van Sickle who sought out Southack, having
remembered him from his earlier legislative days. It was Avery
who conducted the negotiations. Primarily, in all state scheming
at Springfield, Senator Southack was supposed to represent the C.
W. I., one of the great trunk-lines traversing the state, and
incidentally connecting Chicago with the South, West, and East.
This road, having a large local mileage and being anxious to extend
its franchises in Chicago and elsewhere, was deep in state politics.
By a curious coincidence it was mainly financed by Haeckelheimer,
Gotloeb & Co., of New York, though Cowperwood's connection with
that concern was not as yet known. Going to Southack, who was
the Republican whip in the senate, Avery proposed that he, in
conjunction with Judge Dickensheets and one Gilson Bickel, counsel
for the C. W. I., should now undertake to secure sufficient support
in the state senate and house for a scheme introducing the New
York idea of a public-service commission into the governing
machinery of the state of Illinois. This measure, be it noted,
was to be supplemented by one very interesting and important little
proviso to the effect that all franchise-holding corporations
should hereby, for a period of fifty years from the date of the
enactment of the bill into law, be assured of all their rights,
privileges, and immunities--including franchises, of course. This
was justified on the ground that any such radical change as that
involved in the introduction of a public-service commission might
disturb the peace and well-being of corporations with franchises
which still had years to run.
Senator Southack saw nothing very wrong with this idea, though he
naturally perceived what it was all about and whom it was truly
designed to protect.
"Yes," he said, succinctly, "I see the lay of that land, but what
do I get out of it?"
"Fifty thousand dollars for yourself if it's successful, ten
thousand if it isn't--provided you make an honest effort; two
thousand dollars apiece for any of the boys who see fit to help
you if we win. Is that perfectly satisfactory?"
"Perfectly," replied Senator Southack. _
Read next: chapter LV - Cowperwood and the Governor
Read previous: chapter LIII - A Declaration of Love
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