The condition of the Republican party at this time in Philadelphia, its relationship to George W. Stener, Edward Malia Butler, Henry A. Mollenhauer, Senator Mark Simpson, and others, will have to be briefly indicated here, in order to foreshadow Cowperwood’s actual situation. Butler, as we have seen, was normally interested in and friendly to Cowperwood. Stener was Cowperwood’s tool. Mollenhauer and Senator Simpson were strong rivals of Butler for the control of city affairs. Simpson represented the Republican control of the State legislature, which could dictate to the city if necessary, making new election laws, revising the city charter, starting political investigations, and the like. He had many influential newspapers, corporations, banks, at his beck and call. Mollenhauer represented the Germans, some Americans, and some large stable corporations—a very solid and respectable man. All three were strong, able, and dangerous politically. The two latter counted on Butler’s influence, particularly with the Irish, and a certain number of ward leaders and Catholic politicians and laymen, who were as loyal to him as though he were a part of the church itself. Butler’s return to these followers was protection, influence, aid, and good-will generally. The city’s return to him, via Mollenhauer and Simpson, was in the shape of contracts—fat ones—street-paving, bridges, viaducts, sewers. And in order for him to get these contracts the affairs of the Republican party, of which he was a beneficiary as well as a leader, must be kept reasonably straight. At the same time it was no more a part of his need to keep the affairs of the party straight than it was of either Mollenhauer’s or Simpson’s, and Stener was not his appointee. The latter was more directly responsible to Mollenhauer than to any one else. As Butler stepped into the buggy with his son he was thinking about this, and it was puzzling him greatly. “Cowperwood’s just been here,” he said to Owen, who had been rapidly coming into a sound financial understanding of late, and was already a shrewder man politically and socially than his father, though he had not the latter’s magnetism. “He’s been tellin’ me that he’s in a rather tight place. You hear that?” he continued, as some voice in the distance was calling “Extra! Extra!” “That’s Chicago burnin’, and there’s goin’ to be trouble on the stock exchange to-morrow. We have a lot of our street-railway stocks around at the different banks. If we don’t look sharp they’ll be callin’ our loans. We have to ’tend to that the first thing in the mornin’. Cowperwood has a hundred thousand of mine with him that he wants me to let stay there, and he has some money that belongs to Stener, he tells me.” “Stener?” asked Owen, curiously. “Has he been dabbling in stocks?” Owen had heard some rumors concerning Stener and others only very recently, which he had not credited nor yet communicated to his father. “How much money of his has Cowperwood?” he asked.