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 everyone 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 percent 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 ultraconservative 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 one thing to stir up the public, but it’s another to make them forget. This is a restless, socialistic country, and Chicago is the very hotbed and center of it. Still, if it will serve to trip him up I suppose it will do for the present. The newspapers can probably smooth it all over later. But I don’t know.”
Mr. Hand was of that order of mind that sees socialism as a horrible importation of monarchy-ridden Europe. Why couldn’t the people be satisfied to allow the strong, intelligent, God-fearing men of the community to arrange things for them? Wasn’t that what democracy meant? Certainly it was—he himself was one of the strong. He could not help distrusting all this radical palaver. Still, anything to hurt Cowperwood—anything.
Cowperwood was not slow to realize that public sentiment was now in danger of being thoroughly crystallized against him by newspaper agitation. Although his franchises would not expire—the large majority of them—before January 1, 1903, yet if things went on at this rate it would be doubtful soon whether ever again he would be able to win another election by methods legitimate or illegitimate. Hungry aldermen and councilmen might be venal and greedy enough to do anything he should ask, provided he was willing to pay enough, but even the thickest-hided, the most voracious and corrupt politician could scarcely withstand the searching glare of publicity and the infuriated rage of a possibly aroused public opinion. By degrees this last, owing to the untiring efforts of the newspapers, was being whipped into a wild foam. To come into council at this time and ask for a twenty-year extension of franchises not destined to expire for seven years was too much. It could not be done. Even suborned councilmen would be unwilling to undertake it just now. There are some things which even politically are impossible.
To make matters worse, the twenty-year-franchise limit was really not at all sufficient for his present needs. In order to bring about the consolidation of his North and West surface lines, which he was now proposing and on the strength of which he wished to issue at least two hundred million dollars’ worth of one-hundred-dollar-six-percent shares in place of the seventy million dollars current of ten and twelve percent, it was necessary for him to secure a much more respectable term of years than the brief one now permitted by the state legislature, even providing that this latter could be obtained.
“Peeble are not ferry much indrested in tees short-time frangizes,” observed Mr. Gotloeb once, when Cowperwood was talking the matter over with him. He wanted Haeckelheimer & Co. to underwrite the whole issue. “Dey are so insigure. Now if you couldt get, say, a frangize for fifty or one hunnert years or something like dot your stocks wouldt go off like hot cakes. I know where I couldt
