Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Psychological fiction
selling the largest number of barrels of beer of any saloon in Chicago.
More recently, the newspapers having begun to pay humorous attention to
both himself and Mr. Tiernan, because of their prosperity and
individuality, he resented it.
The relation of these two men to the present political situation was
peculiar, and, as it turned out, was to constitute the weak spot in the
Cowperwood-McKenty campaign. Tiernan and Kerrigan, to begin with, being
neighbors and friends, worked together in politics and business, on
occasions pooling their issues and doing each other favors. The
enterprises in which they were engaged being low and shabby, they
needed counsel and consolation. Infinitely beneath a man like McKenty
in understanding and a politic grasp of life, they were, nevertheless,
as they prospered, somewhat jealous of him and his high estate. They
saw with speculative and somewhat jealous eyes how, after his union
with Cowperwood, he grew and how he managed to work his will in many
ways—by extracting tolls from the police department, and heavy annual
campaign contributions from manufacturers favored by the city gas and
water departments. McKenty—a born manipulator in this respect—knew
where political funds were to be had in an hour of emergency, and he
did not hesitate to demand them. Tiernan and Kerrigan had always been
fairly treated by him as politics go; but they had never as yet been
included in his inner council of plotters. When he was down-town on one
errand or another, he stopped in at their places to shake hands with
them, to inquire after business, to ask if there was any favor he could
do them; but never did he stoop to ask a favor of them or personally to
promise any form of reward. That was the business of Dowling and others
through whom he worked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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