nancial influence, began to talk of "fair
play to the old companies," and the uselessness of two large rival
companies in the field when one would serve as well. Still the public,
instructed or urged by the McKenty agents to the contrary, were not
prepared to believe it. They had not been so well treated by the old
companies as to make any outcry on their behalf.

Standing outside the city council door, on the Monday evening when the
bill was finally passed, Mr. Samuel Blackman, president of the South
Side Gas Company, a little, wispy man with shoe-brush whiskers,
declared emphatically:

"This is a scoundrelly piece of business. If the mayor signs that he
should be impeached. There is not a vote in there to-night that has
not been purchased--not one. This is a fine element of brigandage to
introduce into Chicago; why, people who have worked years and years to
build up a business are not safe!"

"It's true, every word of it," complained Mr. Jordan Jules, president
of the North Side company, a short, stout man with a head like an egg
lying lengthwise, a mere fringe of hair, and hard, blue eyes. He was
with Mr. Hudson Baker, tall and ambling, who was president of the West
Chicago company. All of these had come to protest.

"It's that scoundrel from Philadelphia. He's the cause of all our
troubles. It's high time the respectable business element of Chicago
realized just what sort of a man they have to deal with in him. He
ought to be driven out of here. Look at his Philadelphia record. They
sent him to the penitentiary down there, and they ought to do it here."

Mr. Baker, very recently the guest of Schryhart, and his henchman, too,
was also properly chagrined. "The man is a charlatan," he protested to
Blackman. "He doesn't play fair. It is plain that he doesn't belong
in respectable society."

Nevertheless, and in spite of this, the ordinance was passed. It was a
bitter lesson for Mr. Norman Schryhart, Mr. Norrie Simms, and all those
who had unfortunately become involved. A committee composed of all
three of the old companies visited the mayor; but the latter, a tool of
McKenty, giving his future into the hands of the enemy, signed it just
the same. Cowperwood had his franchise, and, groan as they might, it
was now necessary, in the language of a later day, "to step up and see
the captain." Only Schryhart felt personally that his score with
Cowperwood was not settled. He would meet him on some other