Chapter XIV

The development of Cowperwood as Cowperwood & Co. following his arresting bond venture, finally brought him into relationship with one man who was to play an important part in his life, morally, financially, and in other ways.  This was George W. Stener, the new city treasurer-elect, who, to begin with, was a puppet in the hands of other men, but who, also in spite of this fact, became a personage of considerable importance, for the simple reason that he was weak.  Stener had been engaged in the real estate and insurance business in a small way before he was made city treasurer.  He was one of those men, of whom there are so many thousands in every large community, with no breadth of vision, no real subtlety, no craft, no great skill in anything.  You would never hear a new idea emanating from Stener.  He never had one in his life.  On the other hand, he was not a bad fellow.  He had a stodgy, dusty, commonplace look to him which was more a matter of mind than of body.  His eye was of vague gray-blue; his hair a dusty light-brown and thin.  His mouth—­there was nothing impressive there.  He was quite tall, nearly six feet, with moderately broad shoulders, but his figure was anything but shapely.  He seemed to stoop a little, his stomach was the least bit protuberant, and he talked commonplaces—­the small change of newspaper and street and business gossip.  People liked him in his own neighborhood.  He was thought to be honest and kindly; and he was, as far as he knew.  His wife and four children were as average and insignificant as the wives and children of such men usually are.

Just the same, and in spite of, or perhaps, politically speaking, because of all this, George W. Stener was brought into temporary public notice by certain political methods which had existed in Philadelphia practically unmodified for the previous half hundred years.  First, because he was of the same political faith as the dominant local political party, he had become known to the local councilman and ward-leader of his ward as a faithful soul—­one useful in the matter of drumming up votes.  And next—­although absolutely without value as a speaker, for he had no ideas—­you could send him from door to door, asking the grocer and the blacksmith and the butcher how he felt about things and he would make friends, and in the long run predict fairly accurately the probable vote.  Furthermore, you could dole him out a few platitudes and he would repeat them.  The Republican party, which was the new-born party then, but dominant in Philadelphia, needed your vote; it was necessary to keep the rascally Democrats out—­he could scarcely have said why.  They had been for slavery.  They were for free trade.  It never once occurred to him that these things had nothing to do with the local executive and financial administration of Philadelphia.  Supposing they didn’t?  What of it?

In Philadelphia at this time a certain United States Senator, one Mark Simpson, together with Edward Malia Butler and Henry A. Mollenhauer, a rich coal dealer and investor, were supposed to, and did, control jointly the political destiny of the city.  They had representatives, benchmen, spies, tools—­a great company.  Among them was this same Stener—­a minute cog in the silent machinery of their affairs.