of righteousness.
The press should spread this little story broadcast. It was a very
meaty incident; and it brought the whole matter once more into the
fatal, poisonous field of press discussion.

At once the Chicago papers flew to arms. The cry was raised that the
same old sinister Cowperwoodian forces were at work. The members of
the senate and the house were solemnly warned. The sterling attitude
of ex-Governor Swanson was held up as an example to the present
Governor Archer. "The whole idea," observed an editorial in Truman
Leslie MacDonald's Inquirer, "smacks of chicane, political subtlety,
and political jugglery. Well do the citizens of Chicago and the people
of Illinois know who and what particular organization would prove the
true beneficiaries. We do not want a public-service commission at the
behest of a private street-railway corporation. Are the tentacles of
Frank A. Cowperwood to envelop this legislature as they did the last?"

This broadside, coming in conjunction with various hostile rumblings in
other papers, aroused Cowperwood to emphatic language.

"They can all go to the devil," he said to Addison, one day at lunch.
"I have a right to an extension of my franchises for fifty years, and I
am going to get it. Look at New York and Philadelphia. Why, the
Eastern houses laugh. They don't understand such a situation. It's
all the inside work of this Hand-Schryhart crowd. I know what they're
doing and who's pulling the strings. The newspapers yap-yap every time
they give an order. Hyssop waltzes every time Arneel moves. Little
MacDonald is a stool-pigeon for Hand. It's got down so low now that
it's anything to beat Cowperwood. Well, they won't beat me. I'll find
a way out. The legislature will pass a bill allowing for a fifty-year
franchise, and the governor will sign it. I'll see to that personally.
I have at least eighteen thousand stockholders who want a decent run
for their money, and I propose to give it to them. Aren't other men
getting rich? Aren't other corporations earning ten and twelve per
cent? Why shouldn't I? Is Chicago any the worse? Don't I employ twenty
thousand men and pay them well? All this palaver about the rights of
the people and the duty to the public--rats! Does Mr. Hand acknowledge
any duty to the public where his special interests are concerned? Or
Mr. Schryhart? Or Mr. Arneel? The newspapers be damned! I know my
rights. An honest legislature will give me a de