No, as he now said to himself, the rub was not nearly so much in his own home, as it was in the Butler family.  His relations with Edward Malia Butler had become very intimate.  He was now advising with him constantly in regard to the handling of his securities, which were numerous.  Butler held stocks in such things as the Pennsylvania Coal Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the Morris and Essex Canal, the Reading Railroad.  As the old gentleman’s mind had broadened to the significance of the local street-railway problem in Philadelphia, he had decided to close out his other securities at such advantageous terms as he could, and reinvest the money in local lines.  He knew that Mollenhauer and Simpson were doing this, and they were excellent judges of the significance of local affairs.  Like Cowperwood, he had the idea that if he controlled sufficient of the local situation in this field, he could at last effect a joint relationship with Mollenhauer and Simpson.  Political legislation, advantageous to the combined lines, could then be so easily secured.  Franchises and necessary extensions to existing franchises could be added.  This conversion of his outstanding stock in other fields, and the picking up of odd lots in the local street-railway, was the business of Cowperwood.  Butler, through his sons, Owen and Callum, was also busy planning a new line and obtaining a franchise, sacrificing, of course, great blocks of stock and actual cash to others, in order to obtain sufficient influence to have the necessary legislation passed.  Yet it was no easy matter, seeing that others knew what the general advantages of the situation were, and because of this Cowperwood, who saw the great source of profit here, was able, betimes, to serve himself—­buying blocks, a part of which only went to Butler, Mollenhauer or others.  In short he was not as eager to serve Butler, or any one else, as he was to serve himself if he could.

In this connection, the scheme which George W. Stener had brought forward, representing actually in the background Strobik, Wycroft, and Harmon, was an opening wedge for himself.  Stener’s plan was to loan him money out of the city treasury at two per cent., or, if he would waive all commissions, for nothing (an agent for self-protective purposes was absolutely necessary), and with it take over the North Pennsylvania Company’s line on Front Street, which, because of the shortness of its length, one mile and a half, and the brevity of the duration of its franchise, was neither doing very well nor being rated very high.  Cowperwood in return for his manipulative skill was to have a fair proportion of the stock—­twenty per cent.  Strobik and Wycroft knew the parties from whom the bulk of the stock could be secured if engineered properly.  Their plan was then, with this borrowed treasury money, to extend its franchise and then the line itself, and then later again, by issuing a great block of stock and hypothecating it with a favored bank, be able to return the principal to the city treasury and pocket their profits from the line as earned.  There was no trouble in this, in so far as Cowperwood was concerned, except that it divided the stock very badly among these various individuals, and left him but a comparatively small share—­for his thought and pains.