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THE TITAN
and Kerrigan’s treachery, but he did not store it up bitterly against
them. Such was life. They must be looked after more carefully in future, or caught in some trap and utterly undone. According to their
own accounts, they had barely managed to scrape through.
«Look at meself! I only won by three hundred votes», archly declared Mr. Kerrigan, on divers and sundry occasions. «By God, I almost lost me own ward!»
Mr. Tiernan was equally emphatic. «The police was no good to
me», he declared, fi rmly. «They let the other fellows beat up me men.
I only polled six thousand when I should have had nine».
But no one believed them.
While McKenty meditated as to how in two years he should be
able to undo this temporary victory, and Cowperwood was deciding
that conciliation was the best policy for him, Schryhart, Hand, and
Arneel, joining hands with young MacDonald, were wondering how
they could make sure that this party victory would cripple Cowperwood and permanently prevent him from returning to power.
It was a long, intricate fi ght that followed, but it involved (before
Cowperwood could possibly reach the new aldermen) a proposed
reintroduction and passage of the much-opposed General Electric
franchise, the granting of rights and privileges in outlying districts
to various minor companies, and last and worst — a thing which
had not previously dawned on Cowperwood as in any way probable — the projection of an ordinance granting to a certain South
Side corporation the privilege of erecting and operating an elevated road. This was as severe a blow as any that had yet been dealt
Cowperwood, for it introduced a new factor and complication into
the Chicago street-railway situation which had hitherto, for all its
troubles, been comparatively simple.
In order to make this plain it should be said that some eighteen
or twenty years before in New York there had been devised and
erected a series of elevated roads calculated to relieve the congestion of traffi c on the lower portion of that long and narrow island,
and they had proved an immense success. Cowperwood had been in-
331
THEODORE DREISER
terested in them, along with everything else which pertained to public street traffi c, from the very beginning. In his various trips to New
York he had made a careful physical inspection of them. He knew
all about their incorporation, backers, the expense connected with
them, their returns, and so forth. Personally, in so far as New York
was concerned, he considered them an ideal solution of traffi c on
that crowded island. Here in Chicago, where the population was
as yet comparatively small — verging now toward a million, and
widely scattered over a great area — he did not feel that they would
be profi table — certainly not for some years to come. What traffi c
they gained would be taken from the surface lines, and if he built
them he would be merely doubling his expenses to halve his profi ts.
From time to time he had contemplated the possibility of their being built by other men — providing they could secure a franchise,
which previous to the late election had not seemed probable —
and in this connection he had once said to Addison: «Let them sink
their money, and about the time the population is suffi cient to support the lines they will have been driven into the hands of receivers.
That will simply chase the game into my bag, and I can buy them for
a mere song». With this conclusion Addison had agreed. But since
this conversation circumstances made the construction of these elevated roads far less problematic.
In the fi rst place, public interest in the idea of elevated roads
was increasing. They were a novelty, a factor in the life of New York;
and at this time rivalry with the great cosmopolitan heart was very
keen in the mind of the average Chicago citizen. Public sentiment in
this direction, however naive or unworthy, was nevertheless suffi cient to make any elevated road in Chicago popular for the time being. In the second place, it so happened that because of this swelling
tide of municipal enthusiasm, this renaissance of the West, Chicago
had fi nally been chosen, at a date shortly preceding the present campaign, as the favored city for an enormous international fair — quite
the largest ever given in America. Men such as Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel, to say nothing of the various newspaper publishers
332
THE TITAN
and editors, had been enthusiastic supporters of the project, and in
this Cowperwood had been one with them. No sooner, however, had
the award actually been granted than Cowperwood’s enemies made
it their fi rst concern to utilize the situation against him.
To begin with, the site of the fair, by aid of the new anti-Cowperwood council, was located on the South Side, at the terminus of
the Schryhart line, thus making the whole city pay tribute to that
corporation. Simultaneously the thought suddenly dawned upon
the Schryhart faction that it would be an excellent stroke of business if the New York elevated-road idea were now introduced into
the city — not so much with the purpose of making money immediately, but in order to bring the hated magnate to an understanding
that he had a formidable rival which might invade the territory that
he now monopolized, curtailing his and thus making it advisable for
him to close out his holdings and depart. Bland and interesting were
the conferences held by Mr. Schryhart with Mr. Hand, and by Mr.
Hand with Mr. Arneel on this subject. Their plan as fi rst outlined
was to build an elevated road on the South Side — south of the proposed fair-grounds — and once that was popular — having previously secured franchises which would cover the entire fi eld, West,
South, and North — to construct the others at their leisure, and so
to bid Mr. Cowperwood a sweet and smiling adieu.
Cowperwood, awaiting the assembling of the new city council
one month after election, did not propose to wait in peace and quiet
until the enemy should strike at him unprepared. Calling those familiar agents, his corporation attorneys, around him, he was shortly
informed of the new elevated-road idea, and it gave him a real shock.
Obviously Hand and Schryhart were now in deadly earnest. At once
he dictated a letter to Mr. Gilgan asking him to call at his offi ce.
At the same time he hurriedly adjured his advisers to use due diligence in discovering what infl uences could be brought to bear on
the new mayor, the honorable Chaffee Thayer Sluss, to cause him to
veto the ordinances in case they came before him — to effect in him,
indeed, a total change of heart.
333
THEODORE DREISER
The Hon. Chaffee Thayer Sluss, whose attitude in this instance
was to prove crucial, was a tall, shapely, somewhat grandiloquent
person who took himself and his social and commercial opportunities and doings in the most serious and, as it were, elevated light.
You know, perhaps, the type of man or woman who, raised in an atmosphere of comparative comfort and some small social pretension,
and being short of those gray convolutions in the human brain-pan
which permit an individual to see life in all its fortuitousness and
uncertainty, proceed because of an absence of necessity and the consequent lack of human experience to take themselves and all that
they do in the most reverential and Providence-protected spirit.
The Hon. Chaffee Thayer Sluss reasoned that, because of the splendid ancestry on which he prided himself, he was an essentially honest man. His father had amassed a small fortune in the wholesale
harness business. The wife whom at the age of twenty-eight he
had married — a pretty but inconsequential type of woman — was
the daughter of a pickle manufacturer, whose wares were in some
demand and whose children had been considered good «catches» in
the neighborhood from which the Hon. Chaffee Sluss emanated.
There had been a highly conservative wedding feast, and a honeymoon trip to the Garden of the Gods and the Grand Canon. Then
the sleek Chaffee, much in the grace of both families because of
his smug determination to rise in the world, had returned to his
business, which was that of a paper-broker, and had begun with
the greatest care to amass a competence on his own account.
The Honorable Chaffee, be it admitted, had no particular faults,
unless those of smugness and a certain over-carefulness as to his
own prospects and opportunities can be counted as such. But he had
one weakness, which, in view of his young wife’s stern and somewhat Puritanic ideas and the religious propensities of his father and
father-in-law, was exceedingly disturbing to him. He had an eye for
the beauty of women in general, and particularly for plump, blonde
women with corn-colored hair. Now and then, in spite of the fact
that he had an ideal wife and two lovely children, he would cast
334
THE TITAN
a meditative and speculative eye after those alluring forms that cross
the path of all men and that seem to beckon slyly by implication if
not by actual, open suggestion.
However, it was not until several years after Mr. Sluss had married, and when he might have been considered settled in the ways of
righteousness, that he actually essayed to any extent the role of a gay
Lothario. An experience or two with the less vigorous and vicious
girls of the streets, a tentative love affair with a girl in his offi ce
who was not new to the practices she encouraged, and he was fairly
launched. He lent himself at fi rst to the great folly of pretending to
love truly; but this was taken by one and another intelligent young
woman with a grain of salt. The entertainment and preferment he
could provide were accepted as suffi cient reward. One girl, however,
actually seduced, had to be compensated by fi ve thousand dollars —
and that after such terrors and heartaches (his wife, her family, and
his own looming up horribly in the background) as should have
cured him forever of a penchant for stenographers and employees
generally. Thereafter for a long time he confi ned himself strictly to
such acquaintances as he could make through agents, brokers, and
manufacturers who did business with him, and who occasionally invited him to one form of bacchanalian feast or another.
As time went on he became wiser, if, alas, a little more eager.
By association with merchants and some superior politicians whom
he chanced to encounter, and because the ward in which he lived
happened to be a pivotal one, he began to speak publicly on occasion and to gather dimly the import of that logic which sees life as
a pagan wild, and religion and convention as the forms man puts on
or off to suit his fancy, mood, and whims during the onward drift of
the ages. Not for Chaffee Thayer Sluss to grasp the true meaning of
it all. His brain was not big enough. Men led dual lives, it was true;
but say what you would, and in the face of his own erring conduct,
this was very bad. On Sunday, when he went to church with his wife,
he felt that religion was essential and purifying. In his own business
he found himself frequently confronted by various little fl aws of
335
THEODORE DREISER
logic relating to undue profi ts, misrepresentations, and the like; but
say what you would, nevertheless and notwithstanding, God was
God, morality was superior, the church was important. It was wrong
to yield to one’s impulses, as he found it so fascinating to do. One
should be better than his neighbor, or pretend to be.
What is to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this?
In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due to his
fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose to some
eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax he had
become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally acceptable. He was a good Republican, a follower in the wake of Norrie
Simms and young Truman Leslie MacDonald. His father-in-law was
both rich and moderately infl uential. Having lent himself to some
campaign speaking, and to party work in general, he proved quite
an adept. Because of all these things — his ability, such as it was,
his pliability, and his thoroughly respectable savor — he had been
slated as candidate for mayor on the Republican ticket, which had
subsequently been elected.
Cowperwood was well aware, from remarks made in the previous campaign, of the derogatory attitude of Mayor Sluss. Already
he had discussed it in a conversation with the Hon. Joel Avery (exstate senator), who was in his employ at the time. Avery had recently
been in all sorts of corporation work, and knew the ins and outs of
the courts — lawyers, judges, politicians — as he knew his revised
statutes. He was a very little man — not more than fi ve feet one inch
tall — with a wide forehead, saffron hair and brows, brown, catlike eyes and a mushy underlip that occasionally covered the upper
one as he thought. After years and years Mr. Avery had learned to
smile, but it was in a strange, exotic way. Mostly he gazed steadily,
folded his lower lip over his upper one, and expressed his almost unchangeable conclusions in slow Addisonian phrases. In the present
crisis it was Mr. Avery who had a suggestion to make.
«One thing that I think could be done», he said to Cowperwood
one day in a very confi dential conference, «would be to have a look
336
THE TITAN
into the — the — shall I say the heart affairs — of the Hon. Chaffee
Thayer Sluss». Mr. Avery’s cat-like eyes gleamed sardonically. «Unless I am greatly mistaken, judging the man by his personal presence merely, he is the sort of person who probably has had, or if not
might readily be induced to have, some compromising affair with
a woman which would require considerable sacrifi ce on his part to
smooth over. We are all human and vulnerable» — up went Mr. Avery’s lower lip covering the upper one, and then down again —»and
it does not behoove any of us to be too severely ethical and selfrighteous. Mr. Sluss is a well-meaning man, but a trifl e sentimental,
as I take it».
As Mr. Avery paused Cowperwood merely contemplated him,
amused no less by his personal appearance than by his suggestion.
«Not a bad idea», he said, «though I don’t like to mix heart affairs
with politics».
«Yes», said Mr. Avery, soulfully, «there may be something in it.
I don’t know. You never can tell».
The upshot of this was that the task of obtaining an account of
Mr. Sluss’s habits, tastes, and proclivities was assigned to that now
rather dignifi ed legal personage, Mr. Burton Stimson, who in turn
assigned it to an assistant, a Mr. Marchbanks. It was an amazing
situation in some respects, but those who know anything concerning the intricacies of politics, fi nance, and corporate control,
as they were practised in those palmy days, would never marvel at
the wells of subtlety, sinks of misery, and morasses of disaster which
they represented.
From another quarter, the Hon. Patrick Gilgan was not slow in responding to Cowperwood’s message. Whatever his political connections and proclivities, he did not care to neglect so powerful a man.
«And what can I be doing for you to-day, Mr. Cowperwood?» he
inquired, when he arrived looking nice and fresh, very spick and
span after his victory.
«Listen, Mr. Gilgan», said Cowperwood, simply, eying the Republican county chairman very fi xedly and twiddling his thumbs
337
THEODORE DREISER
with fi ngers interlocked, «are you going to let the city council jam
through the General Electric and that South Side ‘L’ road ordinance
without giving me a chance to say a word or do anything about it?»
Mr. Gilgan, so Cowperwood knew, was only one of a new quadrumvirate setting out to rule the city, but he pretended to believe
that he was the last word — an all power and authority — after
the fashion of McKenty. «Me good man», replied Gilgan, archly,
«you fl atter me. I haven’t the city council in me vest pocket. I’ve been
county chairman, it’s true, and helped to elect some of these men,
but I don’t own ’em. Why shouldn’t they pass the General Electric
ordinance? It’s an honest ordinance, as far as I know. All the newspapers have been for it. As for this ‘L’ road ordinance, I haven’t anything to do with it. It isn’t anything I know much about. Young MacDonald and Mr. Schryhart are looking after that».
As a matter of fact, all that Mr. Gilgan was saying was decidedly true. A henchman of young MacDonald’s who was beginning to
learn to play politics — an alderman by the name of Klemm — had
been scheduled as a kind of fi eld-marshal, and it was MacDonald —
not Gilgan, Tiernan, Kerrigan, or Edstrom — who was to round up
the recalcitrant aldermen, telling them their duty. Gilgan’s quadrumvirate had not as yet got their machine in good working order,
though they were doing their best to bring this about. «I helped to
elect every one of these men, it’s true; but that doesn’t mean I’m
running ’em by any means», concluded Gilgan. «Not yet, anyhow».
At the »not yet» Cowperwood smiled.
«Just the same, Mr. Gilgan», he went on, smoothly, «you’re
the nominal head and front of this whole movement in opposition
to me at present, and you’re the one I have to look to. You have this
present Republican situation almost entirely in your own fi ngers,
and you can do about as you like if you’re so minded. If you choose
you can persuade the members of council to take considerable more
time than they otherwise would in passing these ordinances — of
that I’m sure. I don’t know whether you know or not, Mr. Gilgan,
though I suppose you do, that this whole fi ght against me is a strike
338
THE TITAN
campaign intended to drive me out of Chicago. Now you’re a man of
sense and judgment and considerable business experience, and
I want to ask you if you think that is fair. I came here some sixteen or seventeen years ago and went into the gas business. It was
an open fi eld, the fi eld I undertook to develop — outlying towns on
the North, South, and West sides. Yet the moment I started the oldline companies began to fi ght me, though I wasn’t invading their
territory at all at the time».
«I remember it well enough», replied Gilgan. «I was one of
the men that helped you to get your Hyde Park franchise. You’d
never have got it if it hadn’t been for me. That fellow McKibben»,
added Gilgan, with a grin, «a likely chap, him. He always walked as
if he had on rubber shoes. He’s with you yet, I suppose?»
«Yes, he’s around here somewhere», replied Cowperwood, loftily. «But to go back to this other matter, most of the men that are
behind this General Electric ordinance and this ‘L’ road franchise
were in the gas business — Blackman, Jules, Baker, Schryhart, and
others — and they are angry because I came into their fi eld, and angrier still because they had eventually to buy me out. They’re angry
because I reorganized these old-fashioned street-railway companies
here and put them on their feet. Merrill is angry because I didn’t run
a loop around his store, and the others are angry because I ever got
a loop at all. They’re all angry because I managed to step in and do
the things that they should have done long before. I came here —
and that’s the whole story in a nutshell. I’ve had to have the city
council with me to be able to do anything at all, and because I managed to make it friendly and keep it so they’ve turned on me in that
section and gone into politics. I know well enough, Mr. Gilgan», concluded Cowperwood, «who has been behind you in this fi ght. I’ve
known all along where the money has been coming from. You’ve
won, and you’ve won handsomely, and I for one don’t begrudge you
your victory in the least; but what I want to know now is, are you going to help them carry this fi ght on against me in this way, or are you
not? Are you going to give me a fi ghting chance? There’s going to be
339
THEODORE DREISER
another election in two years. Politics isn’t a bed of roses that stays
made just because you make it once. These fellows that you have
got in with are a crowd of silk stockings. They haven’t any sympathy
with you or any one like you. They’re willing to be friendly with you
now — just long enough to get something out of you and club me to
death. But after that how long do you think they will have any use
for you — how long?»
«Not very long, maybe», replied Gilgan, simply and contemplatively, «but the world is the world, and we have to take it as we fi nd it».
«Quite so», replied Cowperwood, undismayed; «but Chicago is
Chicago, and I will be here as long as they will. Fighting me in this
fashion — building elevated roads to cut into my profi ts and giving
franchises to rival companies — isn’t going to get me out or seriously injure me, either. I’m here to stay, and the political situation
as it is to-day isn’t going to remain the same forever and ever. Now,
you are an ambitious man; I can see that. You’re not in politics for
your health — that I know. Tell me exactly what it is you want and
whether I can’t get it for you as quick if not quicker than these other
fellows? What is it I can do for you that will make you see that my
side is just as good as theirs and better? I am playing a legitimate
game in Chicago. I’ve been building up an excellent street-car service. I don’t want to be annoyed every fi fteen minutes by a rival company coming into the fi eld. Now, what can I do to straighten this
out? Isn’t there some way that you and I can come together without
fi ghting at every step? Can’t you suggest some programme we can
both follow that will make things easier?»
Cowperwood paused, and Gilgan thought for a long time. It was
true, as Cowperwood said, that he was not in politics for his health.
The situation, as at present conditioned, was not inherently favorable for the brilliant programme he had originally mapped out for
himself. Tiernan, Kerrigan, and Edstrom were friendly as yet; but
they were already making extravagant demands; and the reformers — those who had been led by the newspapers to believe that
Cowperwood was a scoundrel and all his works vile — were demand-
340
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