in almost unheralded in an as yet unoccupied territory; with
franchises once secured--the reader can quite imagine how--he could
present himself, like a Hamilcar Barca in the heart of Spain or a
Hannibal at the gates of Rome, with a demand for surrender and a
division of spoils.

There were at this time three gas companies operating in the three
different divisions of the city--the three sections, or "sides,"
as they were called--South, West, and North, and of these the
Chicago Gas, Light, and Coke Company, organized in 1848 to do
business on the South Side, was the most flourishing and important.
The People's Gas, Light, and Coke Company, doing business on the
West Side, was a few years younger than the South Chicago company,
and had been allowed to spring intoexistence through the foolish
self-confidence of the organizer and directors of the South Side
company, who had fancied that neither the West Side nor the North
Side was going to develop very rapidly for a number of years to
come, and had counted on the city council's allowing them to extend
their mains at any time to these other portions of the city. A
third company, the North Chicago Gas Illuminating Company, had
been organized almost simultaneously with the West Side company
by the same process through which the other companies had been
brought into life--their avowed intention, like that of the West
Side company, being to confine their activities to the sections
from which the organizers presumably came.

Cowperwood's first project was to buy out and combine the three
old city companies. With this in view he looked up the holders
in all three corporations--their financial and social status.
It was his idea that by offering them three for one, or even four