The affair was finally settled out of court, for Mr.Purdy by this time was a more sensible man.

In the mean time, however, the newspapers had been given full details of the transaction, and a storm of words against Cowperwood ensued.
But more disturbing than the Redmond Purdy incident was the rivalry of a new Chicago street-railway company.

It appeared first as an idea in the brain of one James Furnivale Woolsen, a determined young Westerner from California, and developed by degrees into consents and petitions from fully two-thirds of the residents of various streets in the extreme southwest section of the city where it was proposed the new line should be located.

This same James Furnivale Woolsen, being an ambitious person, was not to be so easily put down.

Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities--a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables and cheaper even than horses.
Cowperwood had heard all about this new electric system some time before, and had been studying it for several years with the greatest interest, since it promised to revolutionize the whole business of street-railroading.