He could neither read nor write at first; but now he knew how, of course.  He had learned from association with Mr. Comiskey that there were other forms of contracting—­sewers, water-mains, gas-mains, street-paving, and the like.  Who better than Edward Butler to do it?  He knew the councilmen, many of them.  Het met them in the back rooms of saloons, on Sundays and Saturdays at political picnics, at election councils and conferences, for as a beneficiary of the city’s largess he was expected to contribute not only money, but advice.  Curiously he had developed a strange political wisdom.  He knew a successful man or a coming man when he saw one.  So many of his bookkeepers, superintendents, time-keepers had graduated into councilmen and state legislators.  His nominees—­suggested to political conferences—­were so often known to make good.  First he came to have influence in his councilman’s ward, then in his legislative district, then in the city councils of his party—­Whig, of course—­and then he was supposed to have an organization.

Mysterious forces worked for him in council.  He was awarded significant contracts, and he always bid.  The garbage business was now a thing of the past.  His eldest boy, Owen, was a member of the State legislature and a partner in his business affairs.  His second son, Callum, was a clerk in the city water department and an assistant to his father also.  Aileen, his eldest daughter, fifteen years of age, was still in St. Agatha’s, a convent school in Germantown.  Norah, his second daughter and youngest child, thirteen years old, was in attendance at a local private school conducted by a Catholic sisterhood.  The Butler family had moved away from South Philadelphia into Girard Avenue, near the twelve hundreds, where a new and rather interesting social life was beginning.  They were not of it, but Edward Butler, contractor, now fifty-five years of age, worth, say, five hundred thousand dollars, had many political and financial friends.  No longer a “rough neck,” but a solid, reddish-faced man, slightly tanned, with broad shoulders and a solid chest, gray eyes, gray hair, a typically Irish face made wise and calm and undecipherable by much experience.  His big hands and feet indicated a day when he had not worn the best English cloth suits and tanned leather, but his presence was not in any way offensive—­rather the other way about.  Though still possessed of a brogue, he was soft-spoken, winning, and persuasive.

He had been one of the first to become interested in the development of the street-car system and had come to the conclusion, as had Cowperwood and many others, that it was going to be a great thing.  The money returns on the stocks or shares he had been induced to buy had been ample evidence of that, He had dealt through one broker and another, having failed to get in on the original corporate organizations.  He wanted to pick up such stock as he could in one organization and another, for he believed they all had a future, and most of all he wanted to get control of a line or two.  In connection with this idea he was looking for some reliable young man, honest and capable, who would work under his direction and do what he said.  Then he learned of Cowperwood, and one day sent for him and asked him to call at his house.