made into a lower grade, one of the problems which now hampered the
growth of the North and West Sides would be obviated. But how? He did
not own the tunnels. He did not own the street-railways. The cost of
leasing and rebuilding the tunnels would be enormous. Helpers and
horses and extra drivers on any grade, however slight, would have to be
used, and that meant an extra expense. With street-car horses as the
only means of traction, and with the long, expensive grades, he was not
so sure that this venture would be a profitable one.

However, in the fall of 1880, or a little earlier (when he was still
very much entangled with the preliminary sex affairs that led
eventually to Rita Sohlberg), he became aware of a new system of
traction relating to street-cars which, together with the arrival of
the arc-light, the telephone, and other inventions, seemed destined to
change the character of city life entirely.

Recently in San Francisco, where the presence of hills made the
movement of crowded street-railway cars exceedingly difficult, a new
type of traction had been introduced--that of the cable, which was
nothing more than a traveling rope of wire running over guttered wheels
in a conduit, and driven by immense engines, conveniently located in
adjacent stations or "power-houses." The cars carried a readily
manipulated "grip-lever," or steel hand, which reached down through a
slot into a conduit and "gripped" the moving cable. This invention
solved the problem of hauling heavily laden street-cars up and down
steep grades. About the same time he also heard, in a roundabout way,
that the Chicago City Railway, of which Schryhart and Merrill were the
principal owners, was about to introduce this mode of traction on its
lines--to cable State Street, and attach the cars of other lines
running farther out into unprofitable districts as "trailers." At once
the solution of the North and West Side problems flashed upon
him--cables.

Outside of the bridge crush and the tunnels above mentioned, there was
one other special condition which had been for some time past
attracting Cowperwood's attention. This was the waning energy of the
North Chicago City Railway Company--the lack of foresight on the part
of its directors which prevented them from perceiving the proper
solution of their difficulties. The road was in a rather
unsatisfactory state financially--really open to a coup of some sort.
In the beginning it had been consi