treet-railway corporation, serving a population of a million and a
half, occupying streets which the people themselves created by their
presence, taking toll from all these humble citizens to the amount of
sixteen or eighteen millions of dollars in the year and giving in
return, so the papers said, poor service, shabby cars, no seats at
rush-hours, no universal transfers (as a matter of fact, there were in
operation three hundred and sixty-two separate transfer points) and no
adequate tax on the immense sums earned. The workingman who read this
by gas or lamp light in the kitchen or parlor of his shabby flat or
cottage, and who read also in other sections of his paper of the free,
reckless, glorious lives of the rich, felt himself to be defrauded of a
portion of his rightful inheritance. It was all a question of
compelling Frank A. Cowperwood to do his duty by Chicago. He must not
again be allowed to bribe the aldermen; he must not be allowed to have
a fifty-year franchise, the privilege of granting which he had already
bought from the state legislature by the degradation of honest men. He
must be made to succumb, to yield to the forces of law and order. It
was claimed--and with a justice of which those who made the charge were
by no means fully aware--that the Mears bill had been put through the
house and senate by the use of cold cash, proffered even to the
governor himself. No legal proof of this was obtainable, but
Cowperwood was assumed to be a briber on a giant scale. By the
newspaper cartoons he was represented as a pirate commander ordering
his men to scuttle another vessel--the ship of Public Rights. He was
pictured as a thief, a black mask over his eyes, and as a seducer,
throttling Chicago, the fair maiden, while he stole her purse. The
fame of this battle was by now becoming world-wide. In Montreal, in
Cape Town, in Buenos Ayres and Melbourne, in London and Paris, men were
reading of this singular struggle. At last, and truly, he was a
national and international figure. His original dream, however,
modified by circumstances, had literally been fulfilled.

Meanwhile be it admitted that the local elements in finance which had
brought about this terrific onslaught on Cowperwood were not a little
disturbed as to the eventual character of the child of their own
creation. Here at last was a public opinion definitely inimical to
Cowperwood; but here also were they themselves, tremendous
profit-holders,