e tremendous buying. But Daylight had
the ready cash, and it had always been his policy to strike quickly.
Before the others could get the warning of the boom, he quietly
accomplished many things. At the same time that his agents were
purchasing corner lots and entire blocks in the heart of the business
section and the waste lands for factory sites, Day was rushing
franchises through the city council, capturing the two exhausted water
companies and the eight or nine independent street railways, and
getting his grip on the Oakland Creek and the bay tide-lands for his
dock system. The tide-lands had been in litigation for years, and he
took the bull by the horns--buying out the private owners and at the
same time leasing from the city fathers.

By the time that Oakland was aroused by this unprecedented activity in
every direction and was questioning excitedly the meaning of it,
Daylight secretly bought the chief Republican newspaper and the chief
Democratic organ, and moved boldly into his new offices. Of necessity,
they were on a large scale, occupying four floors of the only modern
office building in the town--the only building that wouldn't have to be
torn down later on, as Daylight put it. There was department after
department, a score of them, and hundreds of clerks and stenographers.
As he told Dede: "I've got more companies than you can shake a stick
at. There's the Alameda & Contra Costa Land Syndicate, the
Consolidated Street Railways, the Yerba Buena Ferry Company, the United
Water Company, the Piedmont Realty Company, the Fairview and Portola
Hotel Company, and half a dozen more that I've got to refer to a
notebook to remember. There's the Piedmont Laundry Farm, and Redwood
Consolidated Quarries. Starting in with our quarry, I just kept
a-going till I got them all. And there's the ship-building company I
ain't got a name for yet. Seeing as I had to have ferry-boats, I
decided to build them myself. They'll be done by the time the pier is
ready for them. Phew! It all sure beats poker. And I've had the fun
of gouging the robber gangs as well. The water company bunches are
squealing yet. I sure got them where the hair was short. They were
just about all in when I came along and finished them off."

"But why do you hate them so?" Dede asked.

"Because they're such cowardly skunks."

"But you play the same game they do."

"Yes; but not in the same way." Daylight regarded her thoughtfully.
"Whe