A Voice. “Yes, when you think you’re going to get the wadding kicked out of you.”
Another Voice. “You wouldn’t be honest with your mother, you bastard. You couldn’t be!”
Pinski. “If one-half the voters should ask me not to do it I wouldn’t do it.”
A Voice. “Well, we’ll get the voters to ask you, all right. We’ll get nine-tenths of them to sign before tomorrow night.”
An Irish-American (aged twenty-six; a gas collector; coming close to Pinski). “If you don’t vote right we’ll hang you, and I’ll be there to help pull the rope myself.”
One of Pinski’s Lieutenants. “Say, who is that freshie? We want to lay for him. One good kick in the right place will just about finish him.”
The Gas Collector. “Not from you, you carrot-faced terrier. Come outside and see.” (Business of friends interfering).
The meeting becomes disorderly. Pinski is escorted out by friends—completely surrounded—amid shrieks and hisses, catcalls, cries of “Boodler!” “Thief!” “Robber!”
There were many such little dramatic incidents after the ordinance had been introduced.
Henceforth on the streets, in the wards and outlying sections, and even, on occasion, in the business heart, behold the marching clubs—those sinister, ephemeral organizations which on demand of the mayor had cropped out into existence—great companies of the unheralded, the dull, the undistinguished—clerks, workingmen, small business men, and minor scions of religion or morality; all tramping to and fro of an evening, after working-hours, assembling in cheap halls and party clubhouses, and drilling themselves to what end? That they might march to the city hall on the fateful Monday night when the street-railway ordinances should be up for passage and demand of unregenerate lawmakers that they do their duty. Cowperwood, coming down to his office one morning on his own elevated lines, was the observer of a button or badge worn upon the coat lapel of stolid, inconsequential citizens who sat reading their papers, unconscious of that presence which epitomized the terror and the power they all feared. One of these badges had for its device a gallows with a free noose suspended; another was blazoned with the query: “Are we going to be robbed?” On signboards, fences, and dead walls huge posters, four by six feet in dimension, were displayed.
Walden H. Lucas
against the
Boodlers
Every citizen of Chicago should
come down to the City Hall
Tonight
Monday, Dec. 12
and every Monday night
thereafter while the Streetcar
Franchises are under consideration,
and see that the interests
of the city are protected against
Boodleism
Citizens, Arouse and Defeat the Boodlers!
In the papers were flaring headlines; in the clubs, halls, and churches fiery speeches could nightly be heard. Men were drunk now with a kind of fury of contest. They would not succumb to this Titan who was bent on undoing them. They would not be devoured by this gorgon of the East. He should be made to pay an honest return to the city or get out. No fifty-year franchise should be granted him. The Mears law must be repealed, and he must come into the city council humble and with clean hands. No alderman who received as much as a dollar for his vote should in this instance be safe with his life.
Needless to say that in the face of such a campaign of intimidation only great courage could win. The aldermen were only human. In the council committee-chamber Cowperwood went freely among them, explaining as he best could the justice of his course and making it plain that, although willing to buy his rights, he looked on them as no more than his due. The rule of the council was barter, and he accepted it. His unshaken and unconquerable defiance heartened his followers greatly, and the thought of thirty thousand dollars was as a buttress against many terrors. At the same time many an alderman speculated solemnly as to what he would do afterward and where he would go once he had sold out.
At last the Monday night arrived which was to bring the final test of strength. Picture the large, ponderous structure of black granite—erected at the expense of millions and suggesting somewhat the somnolent architecture of ancient Egypt—which served as the city hall and county courthouse combined. On this evening the four streets surrounding it were packed with thousands of people. To this throng Cowperwood has become an astounding figure: his wealth fabulous, his heart iron, his intentions sinister—the acme of cruel, plotting deviltry. Only this day, the Chronicle, calculating well the hour and the occasion, has completely covered one of its pages with an intimate, though exaggerated, description of Cowperwood’s house in New York: his court of orchids, his sunrise room, the baths of pink and blue alabaster, the finishings of marble and intaglio. Here Cowperwood was represented as seated in a swinging divan, his various books, art treasures, and comforts piled about him. The idea was vaguely suggested that in his sybaritic hours odalesques danced before him and unnamable indulgences and excesses were perpetrated.
At this same hour in the council-chamber itself were assembling as hungry and bold a company of gray wolves as was ever gathered under one roof. The room was large, ornamented to the south by tall windows, its ceiling supporting a heavy, intricate chandelier, its sixty-six aldermanic desks arranged in half-circles, one behind the other; its woodwork of black oak carved and highly polished; its walls a dark blue-gray decorated with arabesques in gold—thus giving to all proceedings an air of dignity and stateliness. Above the speaker’s head was an immense portrait in oil of a former mayor—poorly done, dusty, and yet impressive. The size and character of the place gave on ordinary occasions a sort of resonance to the voices of the speakers. Tonight through the closed windows could be heard the sound of distant drums and marching feet. In the hall outside the council door were packed at least a thousand men with
