What can they do? Your request is a reasonable one. Why shouldn’t the city give you the tunnel? It’s no good to anyone as it is. And the loop is no more than the other roads have now. I’m thinking it’s the Chicago City Railway and that silk-stocking crowd on State Street or that gas crowd that’s talking against you. I’ve heard them before. Give them what they want, and it’s a fine moral cause. Give it to anyone else, and there’s something wrong with it. It’s little attention I pay to them. We have the council, let it pass the ordinances. It can’t be proved that they don’t do it willingly. The mayor is a sensible man. He’ll sign them. Let young MacDonald talk if he wants to. If he says too much you can talk to his father. As for Hyssop, he’s an old grandmother anyhow. I’ve never known him to be for a public improvement yet that was really good for Chicago unless Schryhart or Merrill or Arneel or someone else of that crowd wanted it. I know them of old. My advice is to go ahead and never mind them. To hell with them! Things will be sweet enough, once you are as powerful as they are. They’ll get nothing in the future without paying for it. It’s little enough they’ve ever done to further anything that I wanted. Cowperwood, however, remained cool and thoughtful. Should he pay young MacDonald? he asked himself. Addison knew of no influence that he could bring to bear. Finally, after much thought, he decided to proceed as he had planned. Consequently, the reporters around the City Hall and the council-chamber, who were in touch with Alderman Thomas Dowling, McKenty’s leader on the floor of council, and those who called occasionally—quite regularly, in fact—at the offices of the North Chicago Street Railway Company, Cowperwood’s comfortable new offices in the North Side, were now given to understand that two ordinances—one granting the free use of the La Salle Street tunnel for an unlimited period (practically a gift of it), and another granting a right of way in La Salle, Munroe, Dearborn, and Randolph streets for the proposed loop—would be introduced in council very shortly. Cowperwood granted a very flowery interview, in which he explained quite enthusiastically all that the North Chicago company was doing and proposed to do, and made clear what a splendid development it would assure to the North Side and to the business center.