He surveyed these extending lines, with their jingling cars, as he went about the city, with an almost hungry eye.

Chicago was growing fast, and these little horse-cars on certain streets were crowded night and morning--fairly bulging with people at the rush-hours.

If he could only secure an octopus-grip on one or all of them; if he could combine and control them all! What a fortune! That, if nothing else, might salve him for some of his woes--a tremendous fortune--nothing less.

He forever busied himself with various aspects of the scene quite as a poet might have concerned himself with rocks and rills.

To own these street-railways! To own these street-railways! So rang the song of his mind.
Like the gas situation, the Chicago street-railway situation was divided into three parts--three companies representing and corresponding with the three different sides or divisions of the city.
The Chicago City Railway Company, occupying the South Side and extending as far south as Thirty-ninth Street, had been organized in 1859, and represented in itself a mine of wealth.