ssible in the future. If her intention was genuine she would carry
it out in his absence, but he did not believe she would.

Chapter LVIII

A Marauder Upon the Commonwealth

The spring and summer months of 1897 and the late fall of 1898
witnessed the final closing battle between Frank Algernon Cowperwood
and the forces inimical to him in so far as the city of Chicago, the
state of Illinois, and indeed the United States of America, were
concerned. When in 1896 a new governor and a new group of state
representatives were installed Cowperwood decided that it would be
advisable to continue the struggle at once. By the time this new
legislature should convene for its labors a year would have passed
since Governor Swanson had vetoed the original
public-service-commission bill. By that time public sentiment as
aroused by the newspapers would have had time to cool. Already through
various favorable financial interests--particularly Haeckelheimer,
Gotloeb & Co. and all the subsurface forces they represented--he had
attempted to influence the incoming governor, and had in part succeeded.

The new governor in this instance--one Corporal A. E. Archer--or
ex-Congressman Archer, as he was sometimes called--was, unlike Swanson,
a curious mixture of the commonplace and the ideal--one of those
shiftily loyal and loyally shifty who make their upward way by devious,
if not too reprehensible methods. He was a little man, stocky,
brown-haired, brown-eyed, vigorous, witty, with the ordinary
politician's estimate of public morality--namely, that there is no such
thing. A drummer-boy at fourteen in the War of the Rebellion, a
private at sixteen and eighteen, he had subsequently been breveted for
conspicuous military service. At this later time he was head of the
Grand Army of the Republic, and conspicuous in various stirring
eleemosynary efforts on behalf of the old soldiers, their widows and
orphans. A fine American, flag-waving, tobacco-chewing, foul-swearing
little man was this--and one with noteworthy political ambitions.
Other Grand Army men had been conspicuous in the lists for Presidential
nominations. Why not he? An excellent orator in a high falsetto way,
and popular because of good-fellowship, presence, force, he was by
nature materially and commercially minded--therefore without basic
appeal to the higher ranks of intelligence. In seeking the nomination
for governorship he had made the usual overtures and had