n the price you're goin' to pay?"

"I have," answered Gorham; "but I'm not quite ready to quote it. The
stockholders of these small companies understood that you were
purchasing their stock to be merged with the New York Street Railways
Company, didn't they?"

"It don't make a damned bit of difference what they thought. We paid 'em
their price."

"And the stockholders of the New York Street Railways Company thought
you were buying this stock to be merged with theirs, didn't they?"

"We used our own money to buy that stock. You can't find a thing about
it that ain't straight."

"Very good. Now I'll name my price for the three lines. The Consolidated
Companies will pay you fifty thousand dollars for them."

"Fifty thousand!" gasped Brady. "Why, we paid two hundred thousand."

"Thank you. I had wondered what you did pay for them, and this
information is no doubt authentic. The stockholders made a better thing
out of it than you will."

"But we won't sell at anything like that figure."

"Oh, yes, you will if you sell at all," Gorham rejoined. "One method by
which the Consolidated Companies has succeeded is that of taking the
public into its confidence whenever there is need of it. To-morrow we
shall announce the birth of the Manhattan Traction Company, explaining
its inception and its intentions. We shall show that, although we have
paid an enormous price for the purchase of the properties, we shall
capitalize at one-half the amount originally planned by those who would
have carried through the merger if our Companies had not stepped in. We
shall announce an increase of transfer privileges and a reduction of
fares. We shall guarantee better equipment and better service. We shall
also carefully explain that one of the reasons we can do this is that
the company will be run in the interests of the public and the
stockholders instead of in the interests of a few individuals; and we
shall quote, in proof of this, that we purchased the three lines
referred to for fifty thousand dollars when it was originally planned
to have them cost the Companies something over two millions."

"They will still cost the Companies 'something over two millions,'"
shouted Brady, "and the public be damned."

"Our slogan is, 'The public be pleased,'" smiled Gorham. "The offer of
the Consolidated Companies will hold for twenty-four hours only," he
continued, rising. "The franchise, you will perhaps remember, grants
full privileges for the