rails. This type of capitalist existed only on public
franchises--the right to occupy the public streets with their trolley
cars, gas mains, and electric light conduits; they could obtain these
privileges only from complaisant city governments, and the simplest way
to obtain them was to control these governments themselves. Herein we
have the simple formula which made possible one of the most profitable
and one of the most adventurous undertakings of our time.

An attempt to relate the history of all these syndicates would involve
endless repetition. If we have the history of one we have the history of
practically all. I have therefore selected, as typical, the operations
of the group that developed the street railways and, to a certain
extent, the public lighting companies, in our three greatest American
cities--New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

One of the men who started these enterprises actually had a criminal
record. William H. Kemble, an early member of the Philadelphia group,
had been indicted for attempting to bribe the Pennsylvania Legislature;
he had been convicted and sentenced to one year in the county jail and
had escaped imprisonment only by virtue of a pardon obtained through
political influence. Charles T. Yerkes, one of his partners in politics
and street railway enterprises, had been less fortunate, for he had
served seven months for assisting in the embezzlement of Philadelphia
funds in 1873. It was this circumstance in Yerkes's career which
impelled him to leave Philadelphia and settle in Chicago where, starting
as a small broker, he ultimately acquired sufficient resources and
influence to embark in that street railway business at which he had
already served an extensive apprenticeship. Under his domination, the
Chicago aldermen attained a gravity that made them notorious all over
the world. They openly sold Yerkes the use of the streets for cash and
constantly blocked the efforts which an infuriated populace made for
reform. Yerkes purchased the old street railway lines, lined his pockets
by making contracts for their reconstruction, issued large flotations of
watered stock, heaped securities upon securities and reorganization
upon reorganization and diverted their assets to business in a hundred
ingenious ways.

In spite of the crimes which Yerkes perpetrated in American cities,
there was something refreshing and ingratiating about the man.
Possibly this is because he did not associate any