_ The spring and summer months of 1897 and the late fall of 1898
witnessed the final closing battle between Frank Algernon Cowperwood
and the forces inimical to him in so far as the city of Chicago,
the state of Illinois, and indeed the United States of America,
were concerned. When in 1896 a new governor and a new group of
state representatives were installed Cowperwood decided that it
would be advisable to continue the struggle at once. By the time
this new legislature should convene for its labors a year would
have passed since Governor Swanson had vetoed the original
public-service-commission bill. By that time public sentiment as
aroused by the newspapers would have had time to cool. Already
through various favorable financial interests--particularly
Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. and all the subsurface forces they
represented--he had attempted to influence the incoming governor,
and had in part succeeded.
The new governor in this instance--one Corporal A. E. Archer--or
ex-Congressman Archer, as he was sometimes called--was, unlike
Swanson, a curious mixture of the commonplace and the ideal--one
of those shiftily loyal and loyally shifty who make their upward
way by devious, if not too reprehensible methods. He was a little
man, stocky, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vigorous, witty, with the
ordinary politician's estimate of public morality--namely, that
there is no such thing. A drummer-boy at fourteen in the War of
the Rebellion, a private at sixteen and eighteen, he had subsequently
been breveted for conspicuous military service. At this later
time he was head of the Grand Army of the Republic, and conspicuous
in various stirring eleemosynary efforts on behalf of the old
soldiers, their widows and orphans. A fine American, flag-waving,
tobacco-chewing, foul-swearing little man was this--and one with
noteworthy political ambitions. Other Grand Army men had been
conspicuous in the lists for Presidential nominations. Why not
he? An excellent orator in a high falsetto way, and popular because
of good-fellowship, presence, force, he was by nature materially
and commercially minded--therefore without basic appeal to the
higher ranks of intelligence. In seeking the nomination for
governorship he had made the usual overtures and had in turn been
sounded by Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb, and various other corporate
interests who were in league with Cowperwood as to his attitude
in regard to a proposed public-service commission. At first he
had refused to commit himself. Later, finding that the C. W. &
I. and the Chicago & Pacific (very powerful railroads both) were
interested, and that other candidates were running him a tight
chase in the gubernatorial contest, he succumbed in a measure,
declaring privately that in case the legislature proved to be
strongly in favor of the idea and the newspapers not too crushingly
opposed he might be willing to stand as its advocate. Other
candidates expressed similar views, but Corporal Archer proved to
have the greater following, and was eventually nominated and
comfortably elected.
Shortly after the new legislature had convened, it so chanced that
a certain A. S. Rotherhite, publisher of the South Chicago Journal,
was one day accidentally sitting as a visitor in the seat of a
state representative by the name of Clarence Mulligan. While so
occupied Rotherhite was familiarly slapped on the back by a certain
Senator Ladrigo, of Menard, and was invited to come out into the
rotunda, where, posing as Representative Mulligan, he was introduced
by Senator Ladrigo to a stranger by the name of Gerard. The latter,
with but few preliminary remarks, began as follows:
"Mr. Mulligan, I want to fix it with you in regard to this Southack
bill which is soon to come up in the house. We have seventy votes,
but we want ninety. The fact that the bill has gone to a second
reading in the senate shows our strength. I am authorized to come
to terms with you this morning if you would like. Your vote is
worth two thousand dollars to you the moment the bill is signed."
Mr. Rotherhite, who happened to be a newly recruited member of the
Opposition press, proved very canny in this situation.
"Excuse me," he stammered, "I did not understand your name?"
"Gerard. G-er-ard. Henry A. Gerard," replied this other.
"Thank you. I will think it over," was the response of the presumed
Representative Mulligan.
Strange to state, at this very instant the authentic Mulligan
actually appeared--heralded aloud by several of his colleagues who
happened to be lingering near by in the lobby. Whereupon the
anomalous Mr. Gerard and the crafty Senator Ladrigo discreetly
withdrew. Needless to say that Mr. Rotherhite hurried at once to
the forces of righteousness. The press should spread this little
story broadcast. It was a very meaty incident; and it brought the
whole matter once more into the fatal, poisonous field of press
discussion.
At once the Chicago papers flew to arms. The cry was raised that
the same old sinister Cowperwoodian forces were at work. The
members of the senate and the house were solemnly warned. The
sterling attitude of ex-Governor Swanson was held up as an example
to the present Governor Archer. "The whole idea," observed an
editorial in Truman Leslie MacDonald's Inquirer, "smacks of chicane,
political subtlety, and political jugglery. Well do the citizens
of Chicago and the people of Illinois know who and what particular
organization would prove the true beneficiaries. We do not want
a public-service commission at the behest of a private street-railway
corporation. Are the tentacles of Frank A. Cowperwood to envelop
this legislature as they did the last?"
This broadside, coming in conjunction with various hostile rumblings
in other papers, aroused Cowperwood to emphatic language.
"They can all go to the devil," he said to Addison, one day at
lunch. "I have a right to an extension of my franchises for fifty
years, and I am going to get it. Look at New York and Philadelphia.
Why, the Eastern houses laugh. They don't understand such a
situation. It's all the inside work of this Hand-Schryhart crowd.
I know what they're doing and who's pulling the strings. The
newspapers yap-yap every time they give an order. Hyssop waltzes
every time Arneel moves. Little MacDonald is a stool-pigeon for
Hand. It's got down so low now that it's anything to beat Cowperwood.
Well, they won't beat me. I'll find a way out. The legislature
will pass a bill allowing for a fifty-year franchise, and the
governor will sign it. I'll see to that personally. I have at
least eighteen thousand stockholders who want a decent run for
their money, and I propose to give it to them. Aren't other men
getting rich? Aren't other corporations earning ten and twelve per
cent? Why shouldn't I? Is Chicago any the worse? Don't I employ
twenty thousand men and pay them well? All this palaver about the
rights of the people and the duty to the public--rats! Does Mr.
Hand acknowledge any duty to the public where his special interests
are concerned? Or Mr. Schryhart? Or Mr. Arneel? The newspapers be
damned! I know my rights. An honest legislature will give me a
decent franchise to save me from the local political sharks."
By this time, however, the newspapers had become as subtle and
powerful as the politicians themselves. Under the great dome of
the capitol at Springfield, in the halls and conference chambers
of the senate and house, in the hotels, and in the rural districts
wherever any least information was to be gathered, were their
representatives--to see, to listen, to pry. Out of this contest
they were gaining prestige and cash. By them were the reform
aldermen persuaded to call mass-meetings in their respective
districts. Property-owners were urged to organize; a committee
of one hundred prominent citizens led by Hand and Schryhart was
formed. It was not long before the halls, chambers, and committee-rooms
of the capitol at Springfield and the corridors of the one principal
hotel were being tramped over almost daily by rampant delegations
of ministers, reform aldermen, and civil committeemen, who arrived
speechifying, threatening, and haranguing, and departed, only to
make room for another relay.
"Say, what do you think of these delegations, Senator?" inquired
a certain Representative Greenough of Senator George Christian,
of Grundy, one morning, the while a group of Chicago clergymen
accompanied by the mayor and several distinguished private citizens
passed through the rotunda on their way to the committee on
railroads, where the house bill was privily being discussed.
"Don't you think they speak well for our civic pride and moral
upbringing?" He raised his eyes and crossed his fingers over his
waistcoat in the most sanctimonious and reverential attitude.
"Yes, dear Pastor," replied the irreverent Christian, without the
shadow of a smile. He was a little sallow, wiry man with eyes
like a ferret, a small mustache and goatee ornamenting his face.
"But do not forget that the Lord has called us also to this work."
"Even so," acquiesced Greenough. "We must not weary in well doing.
The harvest is truly plenteous and the laborers are few."
"Tut, tut, Pastor. Don't overdo it. You might make me larf,"
replied Christian; and the twain parted with knowing and yet weary
smiles.
Yet how little did the accommodating attitude of these gentlemen
avail in silencing the newspapers. The damnable newspapers! They
were here, there, and everywhere reporting each least fragment of
rumor, conversation, or imaginary programme. Never did the citizens
of Chicago receive so keen a drilling in statecraft--its subtleties
and ramifications. The president of the senate and the speaker
of the house were singled out and warned separately as to their
duty. A page a day devoted to legislative proceeding in this
quarter was practically the custom of the situation. Cowperwood
was here personally on the scene, brazen, defiant, logical, the
courage of his convictions in his eyes, the power of his magnetism
fairly enslaving men. Throwing off the mask of disinterestedness
--if any might be said to have covered him--he now frankly came
out in the open and, journeying to Springfield, took quarters at
the principal hotel. Like a general in time of battle, he marshaled
his forces about him. In the warm, moonlit atmosphere of June
nights when the streets of Springfield were quiet, the great plain
of Illinois bathed for hundreds of miles from north to south in a
sweet effulgence and the rurals slumbering in their simple homes,
he sat conferring with his lawyers and legislative agents.
Pity in such a crisis the poor country-jake legislator torn between
his desire for a justifiable and expedient gain and his fear lest
he should be assailed as a betrayer of the people's interests.
To some of these small-town legislators, who had never seen as
much as two thousand dollars in cash in all their days, the problem
was soul-racking. Men gathered in private rooms and hotel parlors
to discuss it. They stood in their rooms at night and thought
about it alone. The sight of big business compelling its desires
the while the people went begging was destructive. Many a romantic,
illusioned, idealistic young country editor, lawyer, or statesman
was here made over into a minor cynic or bribe-taker. Men were
robbed of every vestige of faith or even of charity; they came to
feel, perforce, that there was nothing outside the capacity for
taking and keeping. The surface might appear commonplace--ordinary
men of the state of Illinois going here and there--simple farmers
and small-town senators and representatives conferring and meditating
and wondering what they could do--yet a jungle-like complexity was
present, a dark, rank growth of horrific but avid life--life at
the full, life knife in hand, life blazing with courage and dripping
at the jaws with hunger.
However, because of the terrific uproar the more cautious legislators
were by degrees becoming fearful. Friends in their home towns,
at the instigation of the papers, were beginning to write them.
Political enemies were taking heart. It meant too much of a
sacrifice on the part of everybody. In spite of the fact that the
bait was apparently within easy reach, many became evasive and
disturbed. When a certain Representative Sparks, cocked and primed,
with the bill in his pocket, arose upon the floor of the house,
asking leave to have it spread upon the minutes, there was an
instant explosion. The privilege of the floor was requested by a
hundred. Another representative, Disback, being in charge of the
opposition to Cowperwood, had made a count of noses and was satisfied
in spite of all subtlety on the part of the enemy that he had at
least one hundred and two votes, the necessary two-thirds wherewith
to crush any measure which might originate on the floor. Nevertheless,
his followers, because of caution, voted it to a second and a third
reading. All sorts of amendments were made--one for a three-cent
fare during the rush-hours, another for a 20 per cent. tax on
gross receipts. In amended form the measure was sent to the senate,
where the changes were stricken out and the bill once more returned
to the house. Here, to Cowperwood's chagrin, signs were made
manifest that it could not be passed. "It can't be done, Frank,"
said Judge Dickensheets. "It's too grilling a game. Their home
papers are after them. They can't live."
Consequently a second measure was devised--more soothing and lulling
to the newspapers, but far less satisfactory to Cowperwood. It
conferred upon the Chicago City Council, by a trick of revising
the old Horse and Dummy Act of 1865, the right to grant a franchise
for fifty instead of for twenty years. This meant that Cowperwood
would have to return to Chicago and fight out his battle there.
It was a severe blow, yet better than nothing. Providing that he
could win one more franchise battle within the walls of the city
council in Chicago, it would give him all that he desired. But
could he? Had he not come here to the legislature especially to
evade such a risk? His motives were enduring such a blistering
exposure. Yet perhaps, after all, if the price were large enough
the Chicago councilmen would have more real courage than these
country legislators--would dare more. They would have to.
So, after Heaven knows what desperate whisperings, conferences,
arguments, and heartening of members, there was originated a second
measure which--after the defeat of the first bill, 104 to 49--was
introduced, by way of a very complicated path, through the judiciary
committee. It was passed; and Governor Archer, after heavy hours
of contemplation and self-examination, signed it. A little man
mentally, he failed to estimate an aroused popular fury at its
true import to him. At his elbow was Cowperwood in the clear light
of day, snapping his fingers in the face of his enemies, showing
by the hard, cheerful glint in his eye that he was still master of
the situation, giving all assurance that he would yet live to whip
the Chicago papers into submission. Besides, in the event of the
passage of the bill, Cowperwood had promised to make Archer
independently rich--a cash reward of five hundred thousand dollars. _