into
its shell and ceases all activity. The city tax department began by
instituting proceedings against the West Division company, compelling
them to disgorge various unpaid street-car taxes which had hitherto
been conveniently neglected. The city highway department was
constantly jumping on them for neglect of street repairs. The city
water department, by some hocus-pocus, made it its business to discover
that they had been stealing water. On the other hand were the smiling
representatives of Cowperwood, Kaifrath, Addison, Videra, and others,
approaching one director or stockholder after another with glistening
accounts of what a splendid day would set in for the Chicago West
Division Company if only it would lease fifty-one per cent. of its
holdings--fifty-one per cent. of twelve hundred and fifty shares, par
value two hundred dollars--for the fascinating sum of six hundred
dollars per share, and thirty per cent. interest on all stock not
assumed.

Who could resist? Starve and beat a dog on the one hand; wheedle, pet,
and hold meat in front of it on the other, and it can soon be brought
to perform. Cowperwood knew this. His emissaries for good and evil
were tireless. In the end--and it was not long in coming--the
directors and chief stockholders of the Chicago West Division Company
succumbed; and then, ho! the sudden leasing by the Chicago West
Division Company of all its property--to the North Chicago Street
Railway Company, lessee in turn of the Chicago City Passenger Railway,
a line which Cowperwood had organized to take over the Washington
Street tunnel. How had he accomplished it? The question was on the tip
of every financial tongue. Who were the men or the organization
providing the enormous sums necessary to pay six hundred dollars per
share for six hundred and fifty shares of the twelve hundred and fifty
belonging to the old West Division company, and thirty per cent. per
year on all the remainder? Where was the money coming from to cable all
these lines? It was simple enough if they had only thought. Cowperwood
was merely capitalizing the future.

Before the newspapers or the public could suitably protest, crowds of
men were at work day and night in the business heart of the city, their
flaring torches and resounding hammers making a fitful bedlamic world
of that region; they were laying the first great cable loop and
repairing the La Salle Street tunnel. It was the same on the North and
West