I only polled six thousand when I should have had nine." But no one believed them.
While McKenty meditated as to how in two years he should be able to undo this temporary victory, and Cowperwood was deciding that conciliation was the best policy for him, Schryhart, Hand, and Arneel, joining hands with young MacDonald, were wondering how they could make sure that this party victory would cripple Cowperwood and permanently prevent him from returning to power.

It was a long, intricate fight that followed, but it involved (before Cowperwood could possibly reach the new aldermen) a proposed reintroduction and passage of the much-opposed General Electric franchise, the granting of rights and privileges in outlying districts to various minor companies, and last and worst--a thing which had not previously dawned on Cowperwood as in any way probable--the projection of an ordinance granting to a certain South Side corporation the privilege of erecting and operating an elevated road.

This was as severe a blow as any that had yet been dealt Cowperwood, for it introduced a new factor and complication into the Chicago street-railway situation which had hitherto, for all its troubles, been comparatively simple.
In order to make this plain it should be said that some eighteen or twenty years before in New York there had been devised and erected a series of elevated roads calculated to relieve the congestion of traffic on the lower portion of that long and narrow island, and they had proved an immense success.

Cowperwood had been interested in them, along with everything else which pertained to public street traffic, from the very beginning.

In his various trips to New York he had made a careful physical inspection of them.