“Well now, Mr. Cowperwood,” McKenty began, when they finally entered the cool, pleasant library, “what can I do for you?”
“Well, Mr. McKenty,” said Cowperwood, choosing his words and bringing the finest resources of his temperament into play, “it isn’t so much, and yet it is. I want a franchise from the Chicago city council, and I want you to help me get it if you will. I know you may say to me why not go to the councilmen direct. I would do that, except that there are certain other elements—individuals—who might come to you. It won’t offend you, I know, when I say that I have always understood that you are a sort of clearing-house for political troubles in Chicago.”
Mr. McKenty smiled. “That’s flattering,” he replied, dryly.
“Now, I am rather new myself to Chicago,” went on Cowperwood, softly. “I have been here only a year or two. I come from Philadelphia. I have been interested as a fiscal agent and an investor in several gas companies that have been organized in Lake View, Hyde Park, and elsewhere outside the city limits, as you may possibly have seen by the papers lately. I am not their owner, in the sense that I have provided all or even a good part of the money invested in them. I am not even their manager, except in a very general way. I might better be called their promoter and guardian; but I am that for other people and myself.”
Mr. McKenty nodded.
“Now, Mr. McKenty, it was not very long after I started out to get franchises to do business in Lake View and Hyde Park before I found myself confronted by the interests which control the three old city gas companies. They were very much opposed to our entering the field in Cook County anywhere, as you may imagine, although we were not really crowding in on their field. Since then they have fought me with lawsuits, injunctions, and charges of bribery and conspiracy.”
“I know,” put in Mr. McKenty. “I have heard something of it.”
“Quite so,” replied Cowperwood. “Because of their opposition I made them an offer to combine these three companies and the three new ones into one, take out a new charter, and give the city a uniform gas service. They would not do that—largely because I was an outsider, I think. Since then another person, Mr. Schryhart”—McKenty nodded—“who has never had anything to do with the gas business here, has stepped in and offered to combine them. His plan is to do exactly what I wanted to do; only his further proposition is, once he has the three old companies united, to invade this new gas field of ours and hold us up, or force us to sell by obtaining rival franchises in these outlying places. There is talk of combining these suburbs with Chicago, as you know, which would allow these three down-town franchises to become mutually operative with our own. This makes it essential for us to do one of several things, as you may see—either to sell out on the best terms we can now, or to continue the fight at a rather heavy expense without making any attempt to strike back, or to get into the city council and ask for a franchise to do business in the down-town section—a general blanket franchise to sell gas in Chicago alongside of the old companies—with the sole intention of protecting ourselves, as one of my officers is fond of saying,” added Cowperwood, humorously.
McKenty smiled again. “I see,” he said. “Isn’t that a rather large order, though, Mr. Cowperwood, seeking a new franchise? Do you suppose the general public would agree that the city needs an extra gas company? It’s true the old companies haven’t been any too generous. My own gas isn’t of the best.” He smiled vaguely, prepared to listen further.
“Now, Mr. McKenty, I know that you are a practical man,” went on Cowperwood, ignoring this interruption, “and so am I. I am not coming to you with any vague story concerning my troubles and expecting you to be interested as a matter of sympathy. I realize that to go into the city council of Chicago with a legitimate proposition is one thing. To get it passed and approved by the city authorities is another. I need advice and assistance, and I am not begging it. If I could get a general franchise, such as I have described, it would be worth a very great deal of money to me. It would help me to close up and realize on these new companies which are entirely sound and needed. It would help me to prevent the old companies from eating me up. As a matter of fact, I must have such a franchise to protect my interests and give me a running fighting chance. Now, I know that none of us are in politics or finance for our health. If I could get such a franchise it would be worth from one-fourth to one-half of all I personally would make out of it, providing my plan of combining these new companies with the old ones should go through—say, from three to four hundred thousand dollars.” (Here again Cowperwood was not quite frank, but safe.) “It is needless to say to you that I can command ample capital. This franchise would do that. Briefly, I want to know if you won’t give me your political support in this matter and join in with me on the basis that I propose? I will make it perfectly clear to you beforehand who my associates are. I will put all the data and details on the table before you so that you can see for yourself how things are. If you should find at any time that I have misrepresented anything you are at full liberty, of course, to withdraw. As I said before,” he concluded, “I am not a beggar. I am not coming here to conceal any facts or to hide anything which might deceive you as to the worth of all this to us. I want you to know the facts. I want you to give me your aid on such terms as you think are fair and equitable. Really the only trouble with me in this situation is that I am not a silk stocking. If I were this gas war would have been adjusted long ago. These gentlemen who are so willing to reorganize through Mr. Schryhart are largely opposed to me because I am—comparatively—a stranger in Chicago and not in their set. If I were”—he moved his hand slightly—“I don’t suppose I would be here this evening asking for your favor, although that does not say that I am not glad to be here, or that I would not be glad to work with you in any way that I might. Circumstances simply have not thrown me across your path before.”
As he talked his eye fixed McKenty steadily, almost innocently; and the latter, following him clearly, felt all the while that he was listening to a strange, able, dark, and very forceful man. There was no beating about the bush here, no squeamishness of spirit, and yet there was subtlety—the kind McKenty liked. While he was amused by Cowperwood’s casual reference to the silk stockings who were keeping him out, it appealed to him. He caught the point of view as well as the intention of it. Cowperwood represented a new and rather pleasing type of financier to him. Evidently, he was traveling in able company if one could believe the men who had introduced him so warmly. McKenty, as Cowperwood was well aware, had personally no interest in the old companies and also—though this he did not say—no particular sympathy with them. They were just remote financial corporations to him, paying political tribute on demand, expecting political favors in return. Every few weeks now they were in council, asking for one gas-main franchise after another (special privileges in certain streets), asking for better (more profitable) light-contracts, asking for dock privileges in the river, a lower tax rate, and so forth and so on. McKenty did not pay much attention to these things personally. He had a subordinate in council, a very powerful henchman by the name of Patrick Dowling, a meaty, vigorous Irishman and a true watch-dog of graft for the machine, who worked with the mayor, the city treasurer, the city tax receiver—in fact, all the officers of the current administration—and saw that such minor matters were properly equalized. Mr. McKenty had only met two or three of the officers of the South Side Gas Company, and that quite casually. He did not like them very well. The truth was that the old companies were officered by men who considered politicians of the McKenty and Dowling stripe as very evil men; if they paid them and did other such wicked things it was because they were forced to do so.
“Well,” McKenty replied, lingering his thin gold watch-chain in a thoughtful manner, “that’s an interesting scheme you have. Of course the old companies wouldn’t like your asking for a rival franchise, but once you had it they couldn’t object very well, could they?” He smiled. Mr. McKenty spoke with no suggest
ion of a brogue. “From one point of view it might be looked upon as bad business, but not entirely. They would be sure to make a great cry, though they haven’t been any too kind to the public themselves. But if you offered to combine with them I see no objection. It’s certain to be as good for them in the long run as it is for you. This merely permits you to make a better bargain.”
“Exactly,” said Cowperwood.
“And you have the means, you tell me, to lay mains in every part of the city, and fight with them for business if they won’t give in?”
“I have the means,” said Cowperwood, “or if I haven’t I can get them.”
Mr. McKenty looked at Mr. Cowperwood very solemnly. There was a kind of mutual sympathy, understanding, and admiration between the two men, but it was still heavily veiled by self-interest. To Mr. McKenty Cowperwood was interesting because he was one of the few business men he had met who were not ponderous, pharasaical, even hypocritical when they were dealing with him.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Cowperwood,” he said, finally. “I’ll take it all under consideration. Let me think it over until Monday, anyhow. There is more of an excuse now for the introduction of a general gas ordinance than there would be a little later—I can see that. Why don’t you draw up your proposed franchise and let me see it? Then we might find out what some of the other gentlemen of the city council think.”
Cowperwood almost smiled at the word “gentlemen.”
“I have already done that,” he said. “Here it is.”
McKenty took it, surprised and yet pleased at this evidence of business proficiency. He liked a strong manipulator of this kind—the more since he was not one himself, and most of those that he did know were thin-blooded and squeamish.
“Let me take this,” he said. “I’ll see you next Monday again if you wish. Come Monday.”
Cowperwood got up. “I thought I’d come and talk to you direct, Mr. McKenty,” he said, “and now I’m glad that I did. You will find, if you will take the trouble to look into this matter, that it is just as I represent it. There is a very great deal of money here in one way and another, though it will take some little time to work it out.”
Mr. McKenty saw the point. “Yes,” he said, sweetly, “to be sure.”
They looked into each other’s eyes as they shook hands.
“I’m not sure but you haven’t hit upon a very good idea here,” concluded McKenty, sympathetically. “A very good idea, indeed. Come and see me again next Monday, or about that time, and I’ll let you know what I think. Come any time you have anything else you want of me. I’ll always be glad to see you. It’s a fine night, isn’t it?” he added, looking out as they neared the door. “A nice moon that!” he added. A sickle moon was in the sky. “Good night.”
Chapter XIII.
The Die is Cast
The significance of this visit was not long in manifesting itself. At the top, in large affairs, life goes off into almost inexplicable tangles of personalities. Mr. McKenty, now that the matter had been called to his attention, was interested to learn about this gas situation from all sides—whether it might not be more profitable to deal with the Schryhart end of the argument, and so on. But his eventual conclusion was that Cowperwood’s plan, as he had outlined it, was the most feasible for political purposes, largely because the Schryhart faction, not being in a position where they needed to ask the city council for anything at present, were so obtuse as to forget to make overtures of any kind to the bucaneering forces at the City Hall.
When Cowperwood next came to McKenty’s house the latter was in a receptive frame of mind. “Well,” he said, after a few genial preliminary remarks, “I’ve been learning what’s going on. Your proposition is fair enough. Organize your company, and arrange your plan conditionally. Then introduce your ordinance, and we’ll see what can be done.” They went into a long, intimate discussion as to how the forthcoming stock should be divided, how it was to be held in escrow by a favorite bank of Mr. McKenty’s until the terms of the agreement under the eventual affiliation with the old companies or the new union company should be fulfilled, and details of that sort. It was rather a complicated arrangement, not as satisfactory to Cowperwood as it might have been, but satisfactory in that it permitted him to win. It required the undivided services of General Van Sickle, Henry De Soto Sippens, Kent Barrows McKibben, and Alderman Dowling for some little time. But finally all was in readiness for the coup.
On a certain Monday night, therefore, following the Thursday on which, according to the rules of the city council, an ordinance of this character would have to be introduced, the plan, after being publicly broached but this very little while, was quickly considered by the city council and passed. There had been really no time for public discussion. This was just the thing, of course, that Cowperwood and McKenty were trying to avoid. On the day following the particular Thursday on which the ordinance had been broached in council as certain to be brought up for passage, Schryhart, through his lawyers and the officers of the old individual gas companies, had run to the newspapers and denounced the whole thing as plain robbery; but what were they to do? There was so little time for agitation. True the newspapers, obedient to this larger financial influence, began to talk of “fair play to the old companies,” and the uselessness of two large rival companies in the field when one would serve as well. Still the public, instructed or urged by the McKenty agents to the contrary, were not prepared to believe it. They had not been so well treated by the old companies as to make any outcry on their behalf.
Standing outside the city council door, on the Monday evening when the bill was finally passed, Mr. Samuel Blackman, president of the South Side Gas Company, a little, wispy man with shoe-brush whiskers, declared emphatically:
“This is a scoundrelly piece of business. If the mayor signs that he should be impeached. There is not a vote in there to-night that has not been purchased—not one. This is a fine element of brigandage to introduce into Chicago; why, people who have worked years and years to build up a business are not safe!”
“It’s true, every word of it,” complained Mr. Jordan Jules, president of the North Side company, a short, stout man with a head like an egg lying lengthwise, a mere fringe of hair, and hard, blue eyes. He was with Mr. Hudson Baker, tall and ambling, who was president of the West Chicago company. All of these had come to protest.
“It’s that scoundrel from Philadelphia. He’s the cause of all our troubles. It’s high time the respectable business element of Chicago realized just what sort of a man they have to deal with in him. He ought to be driven out of here. Look at his Philadelphia record. They sent him to the penitentiary down there, and they ought to do it here.”
Mr. Baker, very recently the guest of Schryhart, and his henchman, too, was also properly chagrined. “The man is a charlatan,” he protested to Blackman. “He doesn’t play fair. It is plain that he doesn’t belong in respectable society.”
Nevertheless, and in spite of this, the ordinance was passed. It was a bitter lesson for Mr. Norman Schryhart, Mr. Norrie Simms, and all those who had unfortunately become involved. A committee composed of all three of the old companies visited the mayor; but the latter, a tool of McKenty, giving his future into the hands of the enemy, signed it just the same. Cowperwood had his franchise, and, groan as they might, it was now necessary, in the language of a later day, “to step up and see the captain.” Only Schryhart felt personally that his score with Cowperwood was not settled. He would meet him on some other ground later. The next time he would try to fight fire with fire. But for the present, shrewd man that he was, he was prepared to compromise.
Thereafter, dissembling his chagrin as best he could, he kept on the lookout for Cowperwood at both of the clubs of which he was a member; but Cowperwood had avoided them during this period of excitement, and Mahomet would have to go to the mountain. So one drowsy June afternoon Mr. Schryhart called at Cowperwood’s office. He had on a bright, new, steel-gray suit and a
straw hat. From his pocket, according to the fashion of the time, protruded a neat, blue-bordered silk handkerchief, and his feet were immaculate in new, shining Oxford ties.
“I’m sailing for Europe in a few days, Mr. Cowperwood,” he remarked, genially, “and I thought I’d drop round to see if you and I could reach some agreement in regard to this gas situation. The officers of the old companies naturally feel that they do not care to have a rival in the field, and I’m sure that you are not interested in carrying on a useless rate war that won’t leave anybody any profit. I recall that you were willing to compromise on a half-and-half basis with me before, and I was wondering whether you were still of that mind.”
“Sit down, sit down, Mr. Schryhart,” remarked Cowperwood, cheerfully, waving the new-comer to a chair. “I’m pleased to see you again. No, I’m no more anxious for a rate war than you are. As a matter of fact, I hope to avoid it; but, as you see, things have changed somewhat since I saw you. The gentlemen who have organized and invested their money in this new city gas company are perfectly willing—rather anxious, in fact—to go on and establish a legitimate business. They feel all the confidence in the world that they can do this, and I agree with them. A compromise might be effected between the old and the new companies, but not on the basis on which I was willing to settle some time ago. A new company has been organized since then, stock issued, and a great deal of money expended.” (This was not true.) “That stock will have to figure in any new agreement. I think a general union of all the companies is desirable, but it will have to be on a basis of one, two, three, or four shares—whatever is decided—at par for all stock involved.”
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