service. Butler could employ more
wagons than he did now--dozens of them, scores. Not only that, but no
other garbage-collector would be allowed. There were others, but the
official contract awarded him would also, officially, be the end of
the life of any and every disturbing rival. A certain amount of the
profitable proceeds would have to be set aside to assuage the feelings
of those who were not contractors. Funds would have to be loaned at
election time to certain individuals and organizations--but no matter.
The amount would be small. So Butler and Patrick Gavin Comiskey, the
councilman (the latter silently) entered into business relations. Butler
gave up driving a wagon himself. He hired a young man, a smart Irish boy
of his neighborhood, Jimmy Sheehan, to be his assistant, superintendent,
stableman, bookkeeper, and what not. Since he soon began to make between
four and five thousand a year, where before he made two thousand, he
moved into a brick house in an outlying section of the south side, and
sent his children to school. Mrs. Butler gave up making soap and feeding
pigs. And since then times had been exceedingly good with Edward Butler.

He could neither read nor write at first; but now he knew how, of
course. He had learned from association with Mr. Comiskey that there
were other forms of contracting--sewers, water-mains, gas-mains,
street-paving, and the like. Who better than Edward Butler to do it?
He knew the councilmen, many of them. Het met them in the back rooms
of saloons, on Sundays and Saturdays at political picnics, at election
councils and conferences, for as a beneficiary of the city's largess he
was expected to contribute not only money, but advice. Curiously he
had developed a strange political wisdom. He knew a successful man or a
coming man when he saw one. So many of his bookkeepers, superintendents,
time-keepers had graduated into councilmen and state legislators. His
nominees--suggested to political conferences--were so often known to
make good. First he came to have influence in his councilman's ward,
then in his legislative district, then in the city councils of
his party--Whig, of course--and then he was supposed to have an
organization.

Mysterious forces worked for him in council. He was awarded significant
contracts, and he always bid. The garbage business was now a thing of
the past. His eldest boy, Owen, was a member of the State legislature
and a partner in his business affairs.