officers large and small, the shrievalty, the water
office, the tax office, all were to come within its purview. It was a
fine, handsome political dream, and as such worthy of every courtesy
and consideration but it was only a political dream in its ultimate
aspects, and as such impressed the participants themselves at times.

The campaign was now in full blast. The summer and fall (September and
October) went by to the tune of Democratic and Republican marching club
bands, to the sound of lusty political voices orating in parks, at
street-corners, in wooden "wigwams," halls, tents, and
parlors--wherever a meager handful of listeners could be drummed up and
made by any device to keep still. The newspapers honked and bellowed,
as is the way with those profit-appointed advocates and guardians of
"right" and "justice." Cowperwood and McKenty were denounced from
nearly every street-corner in Chicago. Wagons and sign-boards on wheels
were hauled about labeled "Break the partnership between the
street-railway corporations and the city council." "Do you want more
streets stolen?" "Do you want Cowperwood to own Chicago?" Cowperwood
himself, coming down-town of a morning or driving home of an evening,
saw these things. He saw the huge signs, listened to speeches
denouncing himself, and smiled. By now he was quite aware as to whence
this powerful uprising had sprung. Hand was back of it, he knew--for
so McKenty and Addison had quickly discovered--and with Hand was
Schryhart, Arneel, Merrill, the Douglas Trust Company, the various
editors, young Truman Leslie MacDonald, the old gas crowd, the Chicago
General Company--all. He even suspected that certain aldermen might
possibly be suborned to desert him, though all professed loyalty.
McKenty, Addison, Videra, and himself were planning the details of
their defenses as carefully and effectively as possible. Cowperwood was
fully alive to the fact that if he lost this election--the first to be
vigorously contested--it might involve a serious chain of events; but
he did not propose to be unduly disturbed, since he could always fight
in the courts by money, and by preferment in the council, and with the
mayor and the city attorney. "There is more than one way to kill a
cat," was one of his pet expressions, and it expressed his logic and
courage exactly. Yet he did not wish to lose.

One of the amusing features of the campaign was that the McKenty
orators had been instructed to s