ng, McKenty's leader on the floor of council, and those who called
occasionally--quite regularly, in fact--at the offices of the North
Chicago Street Railway Company, Cowperwood's comfortable new offices in
the North Side, were now given to understand that two ordinances--one
granting the free use of the La Salle Street tunnel for an unlimited
period (practically a gift of it), and another granting a right of way
in La Salle, Munroe, Dearborn, and Randolph streets for the proposed
loop--would be introduced in council very shortly. Cowperwood granted
a very flowery interview, in which he explained quite enthusiastically
all that the North Chicago company was doing and proposed to do, and
made clear what a splendid development it would assure to the North
Side and to the business center.

At once Schryhart, Merrill, and some individuals connected with the
Chicago West Division Company, began to complain in the newspaper
offices and at the clubs to Ricketts, Braxton, young MacDonald, and the
other editors. Envy of the pyrotechnic progress of the man was as much
a factor in this as anything else. It did not make the slightest
difference, as Cowperwood had sarcastically pointed out, that every
other corporation of any significance in Chicago had asked and received
without money and without price. Somehow his career in connection with
Chicago gas, his venturesome, if unsuccessful effort to enter Chicago
society, his self-acknowledged Philadelphia record, rendered the
sensitive cohorts of the ultra-conservative exceedingly fearful. In
Schryhart's Chronicle appeared a news column which was headed, "Plain
Grab of City Tunnel Proposed." It was a very truculent statement, and
irritated Cowperwood greatly. The Press (Mr. Haguenin's paper), on the
other hand, was most cordial to the idea of the loop, while appearing
to be a little uncertain as to whether the tunnel should be granted
without compensation or not. Editor Hyssop felt called upon to insist
that something more than merely nominal compensation should be made for
the tunnel, and that "riders" should be inserted in the loop ordinance
making it incumbent upon the North Chicago company to keep those
thoroughfares in full repair and well lighted. The Inquirer, under Mr.
MacDonald, junior, and Mr. Du Bois, was in rumbling opposition. No
free tunnels, it cried; no free ordinances for privileges in the
down-town heart. It had nothing to say about Cowperwood personally.
The