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.
But Cowperwood was an opportunist.

And by this time his financial morality had become special and local in its character.