Between the passage on June 5, 1897, of the Mears bill—so christened after the doughty¹ representative who had received a small fortune for introducing it—and its presentation to the Chicago City Council in December of the same year, what broodings, plottings, politickings, and editorializings on the part of all and sundry²! In spite of the intense feeling of opposition³ to Cowperwood there was at the same time in local public life one stratum⁴ of commercial and phlegmatic⁵ substance that could not view him in an altogether unfavorable light. They were in business themselves. His lines passed their doors and served them. They could not see wherein his street-railway service differed so much from that which others might give. Here was the type of materialist⁶ who in Cowperwood’s defiance⁷ saw a justification⁸ of his own material point of view and was not afraid to say so. But as against these there were the preachers—poor wind-blown sticks of unreason who saw only what the current palaver⁹ seemed to indicate. Again there were the anarchists¹⁰, socialists¹¹, single-taxers, and public-ownership advocates. There were the very poor who saw in Cowperwood’s wealth and in the fabulous¹² stories of his New York home and of his art-collection a heartless exploitation of their needs. At this time the feeling was spreading broadcast in America that great political and economic changes were at hand—that the tyranny of iron masters at the top was to give way to a richer, freer, happier life for the rank and file. A national eight-hour-day law was being advocated, and the public ownership of public

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