Observe also in the village of Douglas and West Park on the West
Side, just over the city line, the angular, humorous Peter Laughlin
and Burton Stimson arranging a similar deal or deals.

The enemy, the city gas companies, being divided into three factions,
were in no way prepared for what was now coming. When the news
finally leaked out that applications for franchises had been made
to the several corporate village bodies each old company suspected
the other of invasion, treachery, robbery. Pettifogging lawyers
were sent, one by each company, to the village council in each
particular territory involved, but no one of the companies had as
yet the slightest idea who was back of it all or of the general
plan of operations. Before any one of them could reasonably
protest, before it could decide that it was willing to pay a very
great deal to have the suburb adjacent to its particular territory
left free, before it could organize a legal fight, councilmanic
ordinances were introduced giving the applying company what it
sought; and after a single reading in each case and one open
hearing, as the law compelled, they were almost unanimously passed.
There were loud cries of dismay from minor suburban papers which
had almost been forgotten in the arrangement of rewards. The large
city newspapers cared little at first, seeing these were outlying
districts; they merely made the comment that the villages were
beginning well, following in the steps of the city council in its
distinguished career of crime.

Cowperwood smiled as he saw in the morning papers the announcement
of the passage of each ordinance granting him a franchise. He
listened with comfort thereafter on many a day to accounts by
Laughlin, Sippens, McKibben, and Van Sickle of overtures made to