There’s another in San Francisco.
Some one has invented a car, as I understand it, that’s going to run by electricity, and here we are running cars—barns, I call them—with straw in them.
Good Lord, I should think it was about time that some of us took a tumble to ourselves!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” commented Mr. Skinner.
“It seems to me we have done pretty well by the North Side.
We have done a good deal.”
Directors Solon Kaempfaert, Albert Thorsen, Isaac White, Anthony Ewer, Arnold C. Benjamin, and Otto Matjes, being solemn gentlemen all, merely sat and stared.
The vigorous Kaffrath was not to be so easily repressed, however.
He repeated his complaints on other occasions.
The fact that there was also considerable complaint in the newspapers from time to time in regard to this same North Side service pleased him in a way.
Perhaps this would be the proverbial fire under the terrapin which would cause it to move along.
By this time, owing to Cowperwood’s understanding with McKenty, all possibility of the North Side company’s securing additional franchises for unoccupied streets, or even the use of the La Salle Street tunnel, had ended. Kaffrath did not know this.
Neither did the directors or officers of the company, but it was true.
In addition, McKenty, through the aldermen, who were at his beck and call on the North Side, was beginning to stir up additional murmurs and complaints in order to discredit the present management.
There was a great to-do in council over a motion on the part of somebody to compel the North Side company to throw out its old cars and lay better and heavier tracks.
Curiously, this did not apply so much to the West and South Sides, which were in the same condition.
The rank and file of the city, ignorant of the tricks which were constantly being employed in politics to effect one end or another, were greatly cheered by this so-called “public uprising.”
They little knew the pawns they were in the game, or how little sincerity constituted the primal impulse.
Quite by accident, apparently, one day Addison, thinking of the different men in the North Side company who might be of service to Cowperwood, and having finally picked young Kaffrath as the ideal agent, introduced himself to the latter at the Union League.
“That’s a pretty heavy load of expense that’s staring you North and West Side street-railway people in the face,” he took occasion to observe.
“How’s that?” asked Kaffrath, curiously, anxious to hear anything which concerned the development of the business.
“Well, unless I’m greatly mistaken, you, all of you, are going to be put to the expense of doing over your lines completely in a very little while—so I hear—introducing this new motor or cable system that they are getting on the South Side.”
Addison wanted to convey the impression that the city council or public sentiment or something was going to force the North Chicago company to indulge in this great and expensive series of improvements.
Kaffrath pricked up his ears.
What was the city Council going to do?
He wanted to know all about it.
They discussed the whole situation—the nature of the cable-conduits, the cost of the power-houses, the need of new rails, and the necessity of heavier bridges, or some other means of getting over or under the river.
Addison took very good care to point out that the Chicago City or South Side Railway was in a much more fortunate position than either of the other two by reason of its freedom from the river-crossing problem.
Then he again commiserated the North Side company on its rather difficult position.
“Your company will have a very great deal to do, I fancy,” he reiterated.
Kaffrath was duly impressed and appropriately depressed, for his eight hundred shares would be depressed in value by the necessity of heavy expenditures for tunnels and other improvements.
Nevertheless, there was some consolation in the thought that such betterment, as Addison now described, would in the long run make the lines more profitable.
But in the mean time there might be rough sailing.
The old directors ought to act soon now, he thought.
With the South Side company being done over, they would have to follow suit.
But would they?
How could he get them to see that, even though it were necessary to mortgage the lines for years to come, it would pay in the long run?
He was sick of old, conservative, cautious methods.
After the lapse of a few weeks Addison, still acting for Cowperwood, had a second and private conference with Kaffrath.
He said, after exacting a promise of secrecy for the present, that since their previous conversation he had become aware of new developments.
In the interval he had been visited by several men of long connection with street-railways in other localities.
They had been visiting various cities, looking for a convenient outlet for their capital, and had finally picked on Chicago.
They had looked over the various lines here, and had decided that the North Chicago City Railway was as good a field as any.
He then elaborated with exceeding care the idea which Cowperwood had outlined to him.
Kaffrath, dubious at first, was finally won over.
He had too long chafed under the dusty, poky attitude of the old regime.
He did not know who these new men were, but this scheme was in line with his own ideas.
It would require, as Addison pointed out, the expenditure of several millions of dollars, and he did not see how the money could be raised without outside assistance, unless the lines were heavily mortgaged.
If these new men were willing to pay a high rate for fifty-one per cent. of this stock for ninety-nine years and would guarantee a satisfactory rate of interest on all the stock as it stood, besides inaugurating a forward policy, why not let them?
It would be just as good as mortgaging the soul out of the old property, and the management was of no value, anyhow.