icago was such a splendid city. It was growing so fast.
Its opportunities were so wonderful. These men who had thus foolishly
parted with an indefinite lease of their holdings had not really
considered what they were doing. This matter of Chicago
street-railways, once he had them well in hand, could be made to yield
such splendid profits! He could incorporate and overcapitalize. Many
subsidiary lines, which McKenty would secure for him for a song, would
be worth millions in the future, and they should be his entirely; he
would not be indebted to the directors of the old North Chicago company
for any interest on those. By degrees, year by year, as the city grew,
the lines which were still controlled by this old company, but were
practically his, would become a mere item, a central core, in the so
very much larger system of new lines which he would build up about it.
Then the West Side, and even the South Side sections--but why dream? He
might readily become the sole master of street-railway traffic in
Chicago! He might readily become the most princely financial figure in
the city--and one of the few great financial magnates of the nation.

In any public enterprise of any kind, as he knew, where the suffrages
of the people or the privileges in their possessions are desired, the
newspapers must always be considered. As Cowperwood even now was
casting hungry eyes in the direction of the two tunnels--one to be held
in view of an eventual assumption of the Chicago West Division Company,
the other to be given to the North Chicago Street Railway, which he had
now organized, it was necessary to make friends with the various
publishers. How to go about it?

Recently, because of the influx of a heavy native and foreign-born
population (thousands and thousands of men of all sorts and conditions
looking for the work which the growth of the city seemed to promise),
and because of the dissemination of stirring ideas through radical
individuals of foreign groups concerning anarchism, socialism,
communism, and the like, the civic idea in Chicago had become most
acute. This very May, in which Cowperwood had been going about
attempting to adjust matters in his favor, there had been a tremendous
national flare-up, when in a great public place on the West Side known
as the Haymarket, at one of a number of labor meetings, dubbed
anarchistic because of the principles of some of the speakers, a bomb
had been hurled by some excited fanat