Wanted--Fifty-year Franchises
Whatever his momentary satisfaction in her friendly acceptance of his
confession, the uncertain attitude of Berenice left Cowperwood about
where he was before. By a strange stroke of fate Braxmar, his young
rival, had been eliminated, and Berenice had been made to see him,
Cowperwood, in his true colors of love and of service for her. Yet
plainly she did not accept them at his own valuation. More than ever
was he conscious of the fact that he had fallen in tow of an amazing
individual, one who saw life from a distinct and peculiar point of view
and who was not to be bent to his will. That fact more than anything
else--for her grace and beauty merely emblazoned it--caused him to fall
into a hopeless infatuation.
He said to himself over and over, "Well, I can live without her if I
must," but at this stage the mere thought was an actual stab in his
vitals. What, after all, was life, wealth, fame, if you couldn't have
the woman you wanted--love, that indefinable, unnamable coddling of the
spirit which the strongest almost more than the weakest crave? At last
he saw clearly, as within a chalice-like nimbus, that the ultimate end
of fame, power, vigor was beauty, and that beauty was a compound of the
taste, the emotion, the innate culture, passion, and dreams of a woman
like Berenice Fleming. That was it: that was it. And beyond was
nothing save crumbling age, darkness, silence.
In the mean time, owing to the preliminary activity and tact of his
agents and advisers, the Sunday newspapers were vying with one another
in describing the wonders of his new house in New York--its cost, the
value of its ground, the wealthy citizens with whom the Cowperwoods
would now be neighbors. There were double-column pictures of Aileen
and Cowperwood, with articles indicating them as prospective
entertainers on a grand scale who would unquestionably be received
because of their tremendous wealth. As a matter of fact, this was
purely newspaper gossip and speculation. While the general columns
made news and capital of his wealth, special society columns, which
dealt with the ultra-fashionable, ignored him entirely. Already the
machination of certain Chicago social figures in distributing
information as to his past was discernible in the attitude of those
clubs, organizations, and even churches, membership in which
constitutes a form of social passport to better and higher earthly, if
not spiritual, realms. His emissaries were active enough, but soon
found that their end was not to be gained in a day. Many were waiting
locally, anxious enough to get in, and with social equipments which the
Cowperwoods could scarcely boast. After being blackballed by one or two
exclusive clubs, seeing his application for a pew at St. Thomas's
quietly pigeon-holed for the present, and his invitations declined by
several multimillionaires whom he met in the course of commercial
transactions, he began to feel that his splendid home, aside from its
final purpose as an art-museum, could be of little value.
At the same time Cowperwood's financial genius was constantly being
rewarded by many new phases of materiality chiefly by an offensive and
defensive alliance he was now able to engineer between himself and the
house of Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co. Seeing the iron manner in which
he had managed to wrest victory out of defeat after the first seriously
contested election, these gentlemen had experienced a change of heart
and announced that they would now gladly help finance any new
enterprise which Cowperwood might undertake. Among many other
financiers, they had heard of his triumph in connection with the
failure of American Match.
"Dot must be a right cleffer man, dot Cowperwood," Mr. Gotloeb told
several of his partners, rubbing his hands and smiling. "I shouldt
like to meet him."
And so Cowperwood was manoeuvered into the giant banking office, where
Mr. Gotloeb extended a genial hand.
"I hear much of Chicawkgo," he explained, in his semi-German,
semi-Hebraic dialect, "but almozd more uff you. Are you goink to
swallow up all de street-railwaiss unt elefated roats out dere?"
Cowperwood smiled his most ingenuous smile.
"Why? Would you like me to leave a few for you?"
"Not dot exzagly, but I might not mint sharink in some uff dem wit you."
"You can join with me at any time, Mr. Gotloeb, as you must know. The
door is always very, very wide open for you."
"I musd look into dot some more. It loogs very promising to me. I am
gladt to meet you."
The great external element in Cowperwood's financial success--and one
which he himself had foreseen from the very beginning--was the fact
that Chicago was developing constantly. What had been when he arrived
a soggy, messy plain strewn with shanties, ragged sidewalks, a
higgledy-piggledy business heart, was now truly an astounding
metropolis which had passed the million mark in population and which
stretched proud and strong over the greater part of Cook County. Where
once had been a meager, makeshift financial section, with here and
there only a splendid business building or hotel or a public office of
some kind, there were now canon-like streets lined with fifteen and
even eighteen story office buildings, from the upper stories of which,
as from watch-towers, might be surveyed the vast expanding regions of
simple home life below. Farther out were districts of mansions, parks,
pleasure resorts, great worlds of train-yards and manufacturing areas.
In the commercial heart of this world Frank Algernon Cowperwood had
truly become a figure of giant significance. How wonderful it is that
men grow until, like colossi, they bestride the world, or, like
banyan-trees, they drop roots from every branch and are themselves a
forest--a forest of intricate commercial life, of which a thousand
material aspects are the evidence. His street-railway properties were
like a net--the parasite Gold Thread--linked together as they were, and
draining two of the three important "sides" of the city.
In 1886, when he had first secured a foothold, they had been
capitalized at between six and seven millions (every device for issuing
a dollar on real property having been exhausted). To-day, under his
management, they were capitalized at between sixty and seventy
millions. The majority of the stock issued and sold was subject to a
financial device whereby twenty per cent. controlled eighty per cent.,
Cowperwood holding that twenty per cent. and borrowing money on it as
hypothecated collateral. In the case of the West Side corporation, a
corporate issue of over thirty millions had been made, and these
stocks, owing to the tremendous carrying power of the roads and the
swelling traffic night and morning of poor sheep who paid their
hard-earned nickels, had a market value which gave the road an assured
physical value of about three times the sum for which it could have
been built. The North Chicago company, which in 1886 had a physical
value of little more than a million, could not now be duplicated for
less than seven millions, and was capitalized at nearly fifteen
millions. The road was valued at over one hundred thousand dollars
more per mile than the sum for which it could actually have been
replaced. Pity the poor groveling hack at the bottom who has not the
brain-power either to understand or to control that which his very
presence and necessities create.
These tremendous holdings, paying from ten to twelve per cent. on every
hundred-dollar share, were in the control, if not in the actual
ownership, of Cowperwood. Millions in loans that did not appear on the
books of the companies he had converted into actual cash, wherewith he
had bought houses, lands, equipages, paintings, government bonds of the
purest gold value, thereby assuring himself to that extent of a fortune
vaulted and locked, absolutely secure. After much toiling and moiling
on the part of his overworked legal department he had secured a
consolidation, under the title of the Consolidated Traction Company of
Illinois, of all outlying lines, each having separate franchises and
capitalized separately, yet operated by an amazing hocus-pocus of
contracts and agreements in single, harmonious union with all his other
properties. The North and West Chicago companies he now proposed to
unite into a third company to be called the Union Traction Company. By
taking up the ten and twelve per cent. issues of the old North and West
companies and giving two for one of the new six-per-cent
one-hundred-dollar-share Union Traction stocks in their stead, he could
satisfy the current stockholders, who were apparently made somewhat
better off thereby, and still create and leave for himself a handsome
margin 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 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-per-cent.
shares in place of the seventy million dollars current of ten and
twelve per cents., 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 dispose of fifty million dollars
off dem in Cermany alone."
He was most unctuous and pleading.
Cowperwood understood this quite as well as Gotloeb, if not better. He
was not at all satisfied with the thought of obtaining a beggarly
twenty-year extension for his giant schemes when cities like
Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Pittsburg were apparently glad to
grant their corporations franchises which would not expire for
ninety-nine years at the earliest, and in most cases were given in
perpetuity. This was the kind of franchise favored by the great
moneyed houses of New York and Europe, and which Gotloeb, and even
Addison, locally, were demanding.
"It is certainly important that we get these franchises renewed for
fifty years," Addison used to say to him, and it was seriously and
disagreeably true.
The various lights of Cowperwood's legal department, constantly on the
search for new legislative devices, were not slow to grasp the import
of the situation. It was not long before the resourceful Mr. Joel
Avery appeared with a suggestion.
"Did you notice what the state legislature of New York is doing in
connection with the various local transit problems down there?" asked
this honorable gentleman of Cowperwood, one morning, ambling in when
announced and seating himself in the great presence. A half-burned
cigar was between his fingers, and a little round felt hat looked
peculiarly rakish above his sinister, intellectual, constructive face
and eyes.
"No, I didn't," replied Cowperwood, who had actually noted and pondered
upon the item in question, but who did not care to say so. "I saw
something about it, but I didn't pay much attention to it. What of it?"
"Well, it plans to authorize a body of four or five men--one branch in
New York, one in Buffalo, I presume--to grant all new franchises and
extend old ones with the consent of the various local communities
involved. They are to fix the rate of compensation to be paid to the
state or the city, and the rates of fare. They can regulate transfers,
stock issues, and all that sort of thing. I was thinking if at any
time we find this business of renewing the franchises too uncertain
here we might go into the state legislature and see what can be done
about introducing a public-service commission of that kind into this
state. We are not the only corporation that would welcome it. Of
course, it would be better if there were a general or special demand
for it outside of ourselves. It ought not to originate with us."
He stared at Cowperwood heavily, the latter returning a reflective gaze.
"I'll think it over," he said. "There may be something in that."
Henceforth the thought of instituting such a commission never left
Cowperwood's mind. It contained the germ of a solution--the
possibility of extending his franchises for fifty or even a hundred
years.
This plan, as Cowperwood was subsequently to discover, was a thing more
or less expressly forbidden by the state constitution of Illinois. The
latter provided that no special or exclusive privilege, immunity, or
franchise whatsoever should be granted to any corporation, association,
or individual. Yet, "What is a little matter like the constitution
between friends, anyhow?" some one had already asked. There are fads
in legislation as well as dusty pigeonholes in which phases of older
law are tucked away and forgotten. Many earlier ideals of the
constitution-makers had long since been conveniently obscured or
nullified by decisions, appeals to the federal government, appeals to
the state government, communal contracts, and the like--fine cobwebby
figments, all, but sufficient, just the same, to render inoperative the
original intention. Besides, Cowperwood had but small respect for
either the intelligence or the self-protective capacity of such men as
constituted the rural voting element of the state. From his lawyers
and from others he had heard innumerable droll stories of life in the
state legislature, and the state counties and towns--on the bench, at
the rural huskings where the state elections were won, in country
hotels, on country roads and farms. "One day as I was getting on the
train at Petunkey," old General Van Sickle, or Judge Dickensheets, or
ex-Judge Avery would begin--and then would follow some amazing
narration of rural immorality or dullness, or political or social
misconception. Of the total population of the state at this time over
half were in the city itself, and these he had managed to keep in
control. For the remaining million, divided between twelve small
cities and an agricultural population, he had small respect. What did
this handful of yokels amount to, anyhow?--dull, frivoling,
barn-dancing boors.
The great state of Illinois--a territory as large as England proper and
as fertile as Egypt, bordered by a great lake and a vast river, and
with a population of over two million free-born Americans--would
scarcely seem a fit subject for corporate manipulation and control.
Yet a more trade-ridden commonwealth might not have been found anywhere
at this time within the entire length and breadth of the universe.
Cowperwood personally, though contemptuous of the bucolic mass when
regarded as individuals, had always been impressed by this great
community of his election. Here had come Marquette and Joliet, La
Salle and Hennepin, dreaming a way to the Pacific. Here Lincoln and
Douglas, antagonist and protagonist of slavery argument, had contested;
here had arisen "Joe" Smith, propagator of that strange American dogma
of the Latter-Day Saints. What a state, Cowperwood sometimes thought;
what a figment of the brain, and yet how wonderful! He had crossed it
often on his way to St. Louis, to Memphis, to Denver, and had been
touched by its very simplicity--the small, new wooden towns, so
redolent of American tradition, prejudice, force, and illusion. The
white-steepled church, the lawn-faced, tree-shaded village streets, the
long stretches of flat, open country where corn grew in serried rows or
where in winter the snow bedded lightly--it all reminded him a little
of his own father and mother, who had been in many respects suited to
such a world as this. Yet none the less did he hesitate to press on
the measure which was to adjust his own future, to make profitable his
issue of two hundred million dollars' worth of Union Traction, to
secure him a fixed place in the financial oligarchy of America and of
the world.
The state legislature at this time was ruled over by a small group of
wire-pulling, pettifogging, corporation-controlled individuals who came
up from the respective towns, counties, and cities of the state, but
who bore the same relation to the communities which they represented
and to their superiors and equals in and out of the legislative halls
at Springfield that men do to such allies anywhere in any given field.
Why do we call them pettifogging and dismiss them? Perhaps they were
pettifogging, but certainly no more so than any other shrewd rat or
animal that burrows its way onward--and shall we say upward? The
deepest controlling principle which animated these individuals was the
oldest and first, that of self-preservation. Picture, for example, a
common occurrence--that of Senator John H. Southack, conversing with,
perhaps, Senator George Mason Wade, of Gallatin County, behind a
legislative door in one of the senate conference chambers toward the
close of a session--Senator Southack, blinking, buttonholing his
well-dressed colleague and drawing very near; Senator Wade, curious,
confidential, expectant (a genial, solid, experienced, slightly paunchy
but well-built Senator Wade--and handsome, too).
"You know, George, I told you there would be something eventually in
the Quincy water-front improvement if it ever worked out. Well, here
it is. Ed Truesdale was in town yesterday." (This with a knowing eye,
as much as to say, "Mum's the word.") "Here's five hundred; count it."
A quick flashing out of some green and yellow bills from a vest pocket,
a light thumbing and counting on the part of Senator Wade. A flare of
comprehension, approval, gratitude, admiration, as though to signify,
"This is something like." "Thanks, John. I had pretty near forgot all
about it. Nice people, eh? If you see Ed again give him my regards.
When that Bellville contest comes up let me know."
Mr. Wade, being a good speaker, was frequently in request to stir up
the populace to a sense of pro or con in connection with some
legislative crisis impending, and it was to some such future
opportunity that he now pleasantly referred. O life, O politics, O
necessity, O hunger, O burning human appetite and desire on every hand!
Mr. Southack was an unobtrusive, pleasant, quiet man of the type that
would usually be patronized as rural and pettifogging by men high in
commercial affairs. He was none the less well fitted to his task, a
capable and diligent beneficiary and agent. He was well dressed,
middle-aged,--only forty-five--cool, courageous, genial, with eyes that
were material, but not cold or hard, and a light, springy, energetic
step and manner. A holder of some C. W. & I. R.R. shares, a director
of one of his local county banks, a silent partner in the Effingham
Herald, he was a personage in his district, one much revered by local
swains. Yet a more game and rascally type was not to be found in all
rural legislation.
It was old General Van Sickle who sought out Southack, having
remembered him from his earlier legislative days. It was Avery who
conducted the negotiations. Primarily, in all state scheming at
Springfield, Senator Southack was supposed to represent the C. W. I.,
one of the great trunk-lines traversing the state, and incidentally
connecting Chicago with the South, West, and East. This road, having a
large local mileage and being anxious to extend its franchises in
Chicago and elsewhere, was deep in state politics. By a curious
coincidence it was mainly financed by Haeckelheimer, Gotloeb & Co., of
New York, though Cowperwood's connection with that concern was not as
yet known. Going to Southack, who was the Republican whip in the
senate, Avery proposed that he, in conjunction with Judge Dickensheets
and one Gilson Bickel, counsel for the C. W. I., should now undertake
to secure sufficient support in the state senate and house for a scheme
introducing the New York idea of a public-service commission into the
governing machinery of the state of Illinois. This measure, be it
noted, was to be supplemented by one very interesting and important
little proviso to the effect that all franchise-holding corporations
should hereby, for a period of fifty years from the date of the
enactment of the bill into law, be assured of all their rights,
privileges, and immunities--including franchises, of course. This was
justified on the ground that any such radical change as that involved
in the introduction of a public-service commission might disturb the
peace and well-being of corporations with franchises which still had
years to run.
Senator Southack saw nothing very wrong with this idea, though he
naturally perceived what it was all about and whom it was truly
designed to protect.
"Yes," he said, succinctly, "I see the lay of that land, but what do I
get out of it?"
"Fifty thousand dollars for yourself if it's successful, ten thousand
if it isn't--provided you make an honest effort; two thousand dollars
apiece for any of the boys who see fit to help you if we win. Is that
perfectly satisfactory?"
"Perfectly," replied Senator Southack.