________________________________________________
_ Old Peter Laughlin, rejuvenated by Cowperwood's electric ideas,
was making money for the house. He brought many bits of interesting
gossip from the floor, and such shrewd guesses as to what certain
groups and individuals were up to, that Cowperwood was able to
make some very brilliant deductions.
"By Gosh! Frank, I think I know exactly what them fellers are
trying to do," Laughlin would frequently remark of a morning, after
he had lain in his lonely Harrison Street bed meditating the major
portion of the night. "That there Stock Yards gang" (and by gang
he meant most of the great manipulators, like Arneel, Hand, Schryhart
and others) "are after corn again. We want to git long o' that
now, or I miss my guess. What do you think, huh?"
Cowperwood, schooled by now in many Western subtleties which he
had not previously known, and daily becoming wiser, would as a
rule give an instantaneous decision.
"You're right. Risk a hundred thousand bushels. I think New York
Central is going to drop a point or two in a few days. We'd better
go short a point."
Laughlin could never figure out quite how it was that Cowperwood
always seemed to know and was ready to act quite as quickly in
local matters as he was himself. He understood his wisdom concerning
Eastern shares and things dealt in on the Eastern exchange, but
these Chicago matters?
"Whut makes you think that?" he asked Cowperwood, one day, quite
curiously.
"Why, Peter," Cowperwood replied, quite simply, "Anton Videra"
(one of the directors of the Wheat and Corn Bank) "was in here
yesterday while you were on 'change, and he was telling me." He
described a situation which Videra had outlined.
Laughlin knew Videra as a strong, wealthy Pole who had come up in
the last few years. It was strange how Cowperwood naturally got
in with these wealthy men and won their confidence so quickly.
Videra would never have become so confidential with him.
"Huh!" he exclaimed. "Well, if he says it it's more'n likely so."
So Laughlin bought, and Peter Laughlin & Co. won.
But this grain and commission business, while it was yielding a
profit which would average about twenty thousand a year to each
partner, was nothing more to Cowperwood than a source of information.
He wanted to "get in" on something that was sure to bring very
great returns within a reasonable time and that would not leave
him in any such desperate situation as he was at the time of the
Chicago fire--spread out very thin, as he put it. He had interested
in his ventures a small group of Chicago men who were watching
him--Judah Addison, Alexander Rambaud, Millard Bailey, Anton
Videra--men who, although not supreme figures by any means, had
free capital. He knew that he could go to them with any truly
sound proposition. The one thing that most attracted his attention
was the Chicago gas situation, because there was a chance to step
in almost unheralded in an as yet unoccupied territory; with
franchises once secured--the reader can quite imagine how--he could
present himself, like a Hamilcar Barca in the heart of Spain or a
Hannibal at the gates of Rome, with a demand for surrender and a
division of spoils.
There were at this time three gas companies operating in the three
different divisions of the city--the three sections, or "sides,"
as they were called--South, West, and North, and of these the
Chicago Gas, Light, and Coke Company, organized in 1848 to do
business on the South Side, was the most flourishing and important.
The People's Gas, Light, and Coke Company, doing business on the
West Side, was a few years younger than the South Chicago company,
and had been allowed to spring intoexistence through the foolish
self-confidence of the organizer and directors of the South Side
company, who had fancied that neither the West Side nor the North
Side was going to develop very rapidly for a number of years to
come, and had counted on the city council's allowing them to extend
their mains at any time to these other portions of the city. A
third company, the North Chicago Gas Illuminating Company, had
been organized almost simultaneously with the West Side company
by the same process through which the other companies had been
brought into life--their avowed intention, like that of the West
Side company, being to confine their activities to the sections
from which the organizers presumably came.
Cowperwood's first project was to buy out and combine the three
old city companies. With this in view he looked up the holders
in all three corporations--their financial and social status.
It was his idea that by offering them three for one, or even four
for one, for every dollar represented by the market value of their
stock he might buy in and capitalize the three companies as one.
Then, by issuing sufficient stock to cover all his obligations,
he would reap a rich harvest and at the same time leave himself
in charge. He approached Judah Addison first as the most available
man to help float a scheme of this kind. He did not want him as
a partner so much as he wanted him as an investor.
"Well, I'll tell you how I feel about this," said Addison, finally.
"You've hit on a great idea here. It's a wonder it hasn't occurred
to some one else before. And you'll want to keep rather quiet
about it, or some one else will rush in and do it. We have a lot
of venturesome men out here. But I like you, and I'm with you.
Now it wouldn't be advisable for me to go in on this personally
--not openly, anyhow--but I'll promise to see that you get some
of the money you want. I like your idea of a central holding
company, or pool, with you in charge as trustee, and I'm perfectly
willing that you should manage it, for I think you can do it.
Anyhow, that leaves me out, apparently, except as an Investor.
But you will have to get two or three others to help carry this
guarantee with me. Have you any one in mind?"
"Oh yes," replied Cowperwood. "Certainly. I merely came to you
first." He mentioned Rambaud, Videra, Bailey, and others.
"They're all right," said Addison, "if you can get them. But I'm
not sure, even then, that you can induce these other fellows to
sell out. They're not investors in the ordinary sense. They're
people who look on this gas business as their private business.
They started it. They like it. They built the gas-tanks and laid
the mains. It won't be easy."
Cowperwood found, as Addison predicted, that it was not such an
easy matter to induce the various stock-holders and directors in
the old companies to come in on any such scheme of reorganization.
A closer, more unresponsive set of men he was satisfied he had
never met. His offer to buy outright at three or four for one
they refused absolutely. The stock in each case was selling from
one hundred and seventy to two hundred and ten, and intrinsically
was worth more every year, as the city was growing larger and its
need of gas greater. At the same time they were suspicious--one
and all--of any combination scheme by an outsider. Who was he?
Whom did he represent? He could make it clear that he had ample
capital, but not who his backers were. The old officers and
directors fancied that it was a scheme on the part of some of the
officers and directors of one of the other companies to get control
and oust them. Why should they sell? Why be tempted by greater
profits from their stock when they were doing very well as it was?
Because of his newness to Chicago and his lack of connection as
yet with large affairs Cowperwood was eventually compelled to turn
to another scheme--that of organizing new companies in the suburbs
as an entering-wedge of attack upon the city proper. Suburbs
such as Lake View and Hyde Park, having town or village councils
of their own, were permitted to grant franchises to water, gas,
and street-railway companies duly incorporated under the laws of
the state. Cowperwood calculated that if he could form separate
and seemingly distinct companies for each of the villages and
towns, and one general company for the city later, he would be in
a position to dictate terms to the older organizations. It was
simply a question of obtaining his charters and franchises before
his rivals had awakened to the situation.
The one difficulty was that he knew absolutely nothing of the
business of gas--its practical manufacture and distribution--and
had never been particularly interested init. Street-railroading,
his favorite form of municipal profit-seeking, and one upon which
he had acquired an almost endless fund of specialized information,
offered no present practical opportunity for him here in Chicago.
He meditated on the situation, did some reading on the manufacture
of gas, and then suddenly, as was his luck, found an implement
ready to his hand.
It appeared that in the course of the life and growth of the South
Side company there had once been a smaller organization founded by
a man by the name of Sippens--Henry De Soto Sippens--who had
entered and actually secured, by some hocus-pocus, a franchise to
manufacture and sell gas in the down-town districts, but who had
been annoyed by all sorts of legal processes until he had finally
been driven out or persuaded to get out. He was now in the
real-estate business in Lake View. Old Peter Laughlin knew him.
"He's a smart little cuss," Laughlin told Cowperwood. "I thort
onct he'd make a go of it, but they ketched him where his hair was
short, and he had to let go. There was an explosion in his tank
over here near the river onct, an I think he thort them fellers
blew him up. Anyhow, he got out. I ain't seen ner heard sight
of him fer years."
Cowperwood sent old Peter to look up Mr. Sippens and find out what
he was really doing, and whether he would be interested to get
back in the gas business. Enter, then, a few days later into the
office of Peter Laughlin & Co. Henry De Soto Sippens. He was a
very little man, about fifty years of age; he wore a high,
four-cornered, stiff felt hat, with a short brown business coat
(which in summer became seersucker) and square-toed shoes; he
looked for all the world like a country drug or book store owner,
with perhaps the air of a country doctor or lawyer superadded.
His cuffs protruded too far from his coat-sleeves, his necktie
bulged too far out of his vest, and his high hat was set a little
too far back on his forehead; otherwise he was acceptable, pleasant,
and interesting. He had short side-burns--reddish brown--which
stuck out quite defiantly, and his eyebrows were heavy.
"Mr. Sippens," said Cowperwood, blandly, "you were once in the gas
manufacturing and distributing business here in Chicago, weren't
you?"
"I think I know as much about the manufacture of gas as any one,"
replied Sippens, almost contentiously. "I worked at it for a
number of years."
"Well, now, Mr. Sippens, I was thinking that it might be interesting
to start a little gas company in one of these outlying villages
that are growing so fast and see if we couldn't make some money
out of it. I'm not a practical gas man myself, but I thought I
might interest some one who was." He looked at Sippens in a friendly,
estimating way. "I have heard of you as some one who has had
considerable experience in this field here in Chicago. If I should
get up a company of this kind, with considerable backing, do you
think you might be willing to take the management of it?"
"Oh, I know all about this gas field," Mr. Sippens was about to
say. "It can't be done." But he changed his mind before opening
his lips. "If I were paid enough," he said, cautiously. "I suppose
you know what you have to contend with?"
"Oh yes," Cowperwood replied, smiling. "What would you consider
'paid enough' to mean?"
"Oh, if I were given six thousand a year and a sufficient interest
in the company--say, a half, or something like that--I might
consider it," replied Sippens, determined, as he thought, to
frighten Cowperwood off by his exorbitant demands. He was making
almost six thousand dollars a year out of his present business.
"You wouldn't think that four thousand in several companies--say
up to fifteen thousand dollars--and an interest of about a tenth
in each would be better?"
Mr. Sippens meditated carefully on this. Plainly, the man before
him was no trifling beginner. He looked at Cowperwood shrewdly
and saw at once, without any additional explanation of any kind,
that the latter was preparing a big fight of some sort. Ten years
before Sippens had sensed the immense possibilities of the gas
business. He had tried to "get in on it," but had been sued,
waylaid, enjoined, financially blockaded, and finally blown up.
He had always resented the treatment he had received, and he had
bitterly regretted his inability to retaliate. He had thought his
days of financial effort were over, but here was a man who was
subtly suggesting a stirring fight, and who was calling him, like
a hunter with horn, to the chase.
"Well, Mr. Cowperwood," he replied, with less defiance and more
camaraderie, "if you could show me that you have a legitimate
proposition in hand I am a practical gas man. I know all about
mains, franchise contracts, and gas-machinery. I organized and
installed the plant at Dayton, Ohio, and Rochester, New York. I
would have been rich if I had got here a little earlier." The echo
of regret was in his voice.
"Well, now, here's your chance, Mr. Sippens," urged Cowperwood,
subtly. "Between you and me there's going to be a big new gas
company in the field. We'll make these old fellows step up and
see us quickly. Doesn't that interest you? There'll be plenty of
money. It isn't that that's wanting--it's an organizer, a fighter,
a practical gas man to build the plant, lay the mains, and so on."
Cowperwood rose suddenly, straight and determined--a trick with
him when he wanted to really impress any one. He seemed to radiate
force, conquest, victory. "Do you want to come in?"
"Yes, I do, Mr. Cowperwood!" exclaimed Sippens, jumping to his
feet, putting on his hat and shoving it far back on his head. He
looked like a chest-swollen bantam rooster.
Cowperwood took his extended hand.
"Get your real-estate affairs in order. I'll want you to get me
a franchise in Lake View shortly and build me a plant. I'll give
you all the help you need. I'll arrange everything to your
satisfaction within a week or so. We will want a good lawyer or
two."
Sippens smiled ecstatically as he left the office. Oh, the wonder
of this, and after ten years! Now he would show those crooks. Now
he had a real fighter behind him--a man like himself. Now, by
George, the fur would begin to fly! Who was this man, anyhow? What
a wonder! He would look him up. He knew that from now on he would
do almost anything Cowperwood wanted him to do. _
Read next: chapter VIII - Now This is Fighting
Read previous: chapter VI - The New Queen of the Home
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