rgin of nearly eighty million dollars. With a renewal of his
franchises for twenty, fifty, or one hundred years he would have
fastened on the city of Chicago the burden of yielding interest on this
somewhat fictitious value and would leave himself personally worth in
the neighborhood of one hundred millions.

This matter of extending his franchises was a most difficult and
intricate business, however. It involved overcoming or outwitting a
recent and very treacherous increase of local sentiment against him.
This had been occasioned by various details which related to his
elevated roads. To the two lines already built he now added a third
property, the Union Loop. This he prepared to connect not only with
his own, but with other outside elevated properties, chief among which
was Mr. Schryhart's South Side "L." He would then farm out to his
enemies the privilege of running trains on this new line. However
unwillingly, they would be forced to avail themselves of the proffered
opportunity, because within the region covered by the new loop was the
true congestion--here every one desired to come either once or twice
during the day or night. By this means Cowperwood would secure to his
property a paying interest from the start.

This scheme aroused a really unprecedented antagonism in the breasts of
Cowperwood's enemies. By the Arneel-Hand-Schryhart contingent it was
looked upon as nothing short of diabolical. The newspapers, directed
by such men as Haguenin, Hyssop, Ormonde Ricketts, and Truman Leslie
MacDonald (whose father was now dead, and whose thoughts as editor of
the Inquirer were almost solely directed toward driving Cowperwood out
of Chicago), began to shout, as a last resort, in the interests of
democracy. Seats for everybody (on Cowperwood's lines), no more straps
in the rush hours, three-cent fares for workingmen, morning and
evening, free transfers from all of Cowperwood's lines north to west
and west to north, twenty per cent. of the gross income of his lines to
be paid to the city. The masses should be made cognizant of their
individual rights and privileges. Such a course, while decidedly
inimical to Cowperwood's interests at the present time, and as such
strongly favored by the majority of his opponents, had nevertheless its
disturbing elements to an ultra-conservative like Hosmer Hand.

"I don't know about this, Norman," he remarked to Schryhart, on one
occasion. "I don't know about this. It's