Toil how they might through the twenty-four hours, the factories of Coventry could not keep pace with the demand. Orders came in quicker than cycles were despatched, and every little metal-working firm went into cycle-making, while thousands upon thousands of mechanics flocked into the “city of the boom.” Any one could find work and good wages in Coventry, but the rush was so great that many could find no lodgings, and payment was frequently offered for shelter in the local workhouse, offers that, of course, could not be entertained. In some cases cycle manufacturers provided their new hands with temporary accommodation in their works. The population, numbering in 1891 58,503, rose at once by 10,000. To meet this influx, building operations were feverishly begun, and street upon street of entirely new suburbs began to rise. And for a time the “boom” continued. Newer and immensely large factories were built on the strength of it, and during 1897 the output of cycles rose to an extraordinary height. It was the Company Promoter who killed all this prosperity. Unscrupulous men, versed in all the dark ways of the financial world, found their opportunity in those palmy days, and, purchasing and amalgamating, converted prosperous private firms into unwieldy and over-capitalised public companies. In the thick of all this juggling with millions, and snatching of commissions and vendors’ profits, the bubble burst, and an honourable and highly prosperous industry was wrecked, and became a bye-word and a reproach all the world over. The events of 1898 make a painful retrospect. Noblemen who bore ancient and honourable titles were publicly accused as common touts and commission agents engaged in hoodwinking the public, and even ready, when opportunity offered, to cheat one another. The scandal struck the heaviest blow to the House of Lords and hereditary legislation that that House and that principle of government have ever suffered.