“Just the same, Mr. Gilgan,” he went on, smoothly, “you’re the nominal head and front of this whole movement in opposition to me at present, and you’re the one I have to look to. You have this present Republican situation almost entirely in your own fingers, and you can do about as you like if you’re so minded. If you choose you can persuade the members of council to take considerable more time than they otherwise would in passing these ordinances—of that I’m sure. I don’t know whether you know or not, Mr. Gilgan, though I suppose you do, that this whole fight against me is a strike campaign intended to drive me out of Chicago. Now you’re a man of sense and judgment and considerable business experience, and I want to ask you if you think that is fair. I came here some sixteen or seventeen years ago and went into the gas business. It was an open field, the field I undertook to develop—outlying towns on the North, South, and West sides. Yet the moment I started the old-line companies began to fight me, though I wasn’t invading their territory at all at the time.” “I remember it well enough,” replied Gilgan. “I was one of the men that helped you to get your Hyde Park franchise. You’d never have got it if it hadn’t been for me. That fellow McKibben,” added Gilgan, with a grin, “a likely chap, him. He always walked as if he had on rubber shoes. He’s with you yet, I suppose?” “Yes, he’s around here somewhere,” replied Cowperwood, loftily. “But to go back to this other matter, most of the men that are behind this General Electric ordinance and this ‘L’ road franchise were in the gas business—Blackman, Jules, Baker, Schryhart, and others—and they are angry because I came into their field, and angrier still because they had eventually to buy me out. They’re angry because I reorganized these old-fashioned street-railway companies here and put them on their feet. Merrill is angry because I didn’t run a loop around his store, and the others are angry because I ever got a loop at all. They’re all angry because I managed to step in and do the things that they should have done long before. I came here—and that’s the whole story in a nutshell. I’ve had to have the city council with me to be able to do anything at all, and because I managed to make it friendly and keep it so they’ve turned on me in that section and gone into politics. I know well enough, Mr. Gilgan,” concluded Cowperwood, “who has been behind you in this fight. I’ve known all along where the money has been coming from. You’ve won, and you’ve won handsomely, and I for one don’t begrudge you your victory in the least; but what I want to know now is, are you going to help them carry this fight on against me in this way, or are you not? Are you going to give me a fighting chance? There’s going to be another election in two years. Politics isn’t a bed of roses that stays made just because you make it once. These fellows that you have got in with are a crowd of silk stockings.