CHAPTER XVIII.
The Real Fight Begins.

Had the Prosecution stopped here, the men whose devotion and self-sacrifice had made the undoing of the corrupt administration possible, would have retired with nothing more serious confronting them than the condemnation of the impotent puppets of large interests whom they had brought to grief. But those behind the Prosecution were not content to leave their work at a point where the regeneration of San Francisco had scarcely begun. They proposed to go to the bottom of the graft scandal. It was not sufficient, they held, to punish poor men who were without friends or influence, while their rich and powerful associates went unpunished. The bribe-taking Supervisors might be put in the penitentiary, but other bribe-taking Supervisors would eventually take their places. Ruef, punished by imprisonment, would serve as an example for political bosses that would cause them to hesitate for long before embarking in corrupt enterprises such as had brought the discredited boss to grief. This would make it hard for bribe-giving corporations to secure agents for bribe-passing, and make bribe-giving correspondingly difficult. But the conviction of high corporation officials, responsible for the bribe-giving of public-service corporations, was regarded as more important than all, for this would demonstrate bribe-giving to be unsafe, and check the practice at its very fountain-head. Such conviction, the Prosecution held, would have greater deterrent effect against bribery of public officials than the confinement of 500 bribe-taking Supervisors in the penitentiary.[261]

“I would be willing,” Rudolph Spreckels testified at the Calhoun trial, “to grant immunity to any man who would bring to bar a man of great wealth who would debauch a city government, and who would use his wealth to corrupt individuals and tempt men of no means to commit crime in order that he might make more money.”

Such was the stand taken by District Attorney Langdon and his associates. The announced policy of the Prosecution, therefore, included the prosecution of the bribe-giver to the end. In pursuing this policy, Mr. Langdon and his associates aroused the astonishingly effective opposition of interests representing hundreds of millions of capital. Every indictment of capitalist charged with bribe-giving was signal for a new group of financial leaders, their satellites, beneficiaries and dependents, to array themselves on the side of the graft defense.[262]

With every indictment came a new group of attorneys to raise technical objections to the proceedings, all of which the attorneys for the Prosecution were obliged to meet.

The first attack was upon the validity of the Grand Jury. The attorneys for Ruef and Schmitz had apparently exhausted every point that could be raised for the disqualification of the Grand Jurors, but this did not prevent the heads of corporations who found themselves under indictment making similar attacks. And between them, in this new move to quash the indictments, the defendants enlisted the ablest members of the California bar.[263]

In this new opposition an astonishing number of technical points were raised by one or the other of the groups of defending lawyers. Nothing was overlooked.

Just before the principal indictments were brought, for example, the San Francisco merchants had given a banquet to celebrate the progress which San Francisco had made during the first year following the fire.[264] Langdon and Heney were given places of honor. They were the heroes of the occasion. Every reference to their work was signal for tremendous demonstration. There was no suggestion then that the pursuit of criminals would “hurt business.”

“A severe earthquake,” observed Frank J. Symmes, president of the Merchants’ Association, “is a serious misfortune, and a great conflagration a great trial, and each awake the sympathy of the Nation, but a corrupt government is at once a crime and a disgrace and brings no sympathy.”

“We foresee,” said Bishop William Ford Nichols, another of the speakers of the evening, “the greater San Francisco. We mean to make it fairer to the eye. But how about making it better? Size and sin may go together. Rehabilitated buildings may house debilitated character.”

A month later, after indictments had been brought against some of the most prominent business men of the city, word went out that steps would be taken to disqualify every member of the Grand Jury who had attended that merchants’ banquet.

The Grand Jurors were again called to the witness stand and put through a grilling to determine whether or not they were biased. Rudolph Spreckels was under examination for hours in efforts to show that his motives in backing the Prosecution were bad.[265]

Every step of the proceedings at the organization of the Grand Jury was scrutinized. The question of the method of employing the stenographer to the Grand Jury was made subject of hours of argument. If she were irregularly employed, it was held, she was an unauthorized person in the Grand Jury room and her unwarranted presence sufficient to invalidate the indictments. Garret McEnerney, representing Eugene de Sabla, Jr., Frank Drum and John Martin, whose indictments grew out of the bribery of the Supervisors to fix the gas rate at 85 cents per 1000 cubic feet instead of 75 cents, was the first to raise this question. But attorneys for other defendants took it up and seriously considered it as valid objection to the sufficiency of the indictments. A further point was raised by several of the defendants that the stenographer had not been properly sworn. The question was seriously debated, whether she had looked at Prosecutor Heney or Foreman Oliver at the moment she was sworn to secrecy.[266]

Another point was brought up by the defendants in the United Railroads bribery case, that inasmuch as the defendants Calhoun, Mullally and Ford, had been called to the Grand Jury room and compelled to fall back upon their constitutional rights to avoid testifying, that they had been placed in a prejudicial position before the Grand Jury, which constituted reversible error.[267] Another objection was that the Grand Jury box had been destroyed in the great fire of 1906, and that no order had come from any department of the Superior Court ordering its restoration. Again, it was asserted, that Grand Juror James E. Gordan was a member of the Grand Jury panel of 1906, while the other Grand Jurors were chosen from the 1907 list. Indictments brought by a Grand Jury thus constituted were claimed to be without effect.

Had any one of these and many other similar objections been sustained, all indictments against the graft defendants would have been invalidated. Every objection had to be met. Days and weeks were spent by the District Attorney’s office in meeting, or preparing to meet objections which to the layman appear trifling and ridiculous.

In the midst of this technical fight to have the indictments against them set aside, the graft defendants received aid from an unlooked-for source. Sympathizers with the United Railroads conductors and motormen, then on strike, whose union Patrick Calhoun was at the time endeavoring to crush—and finally did crush—started an independent attack upon the Grand Jury.

Four union sympathizers had been indicted in connection with street riots. Their attorneys, before Superior Judge Cook, raised the point that as the Oliver Grand Jury had continued in service after a new panel had been drawn in the office of the clerk and put on file, the term of the Grand Jury’s service had expired. It was, therefore, no longer part of the machinery of the Court and had no power as an inquisitorial body. Under this interpretation, not only would the indictments against the strikers be invalidated, but those against the alleged bribe-givers also.[268] Thus four of Mr. Calhoun’s striking carmen, in their efforts to evade trial on charges growing out of opposition to the United Railroads, were making stronger fight to release Mr. Calhoun from indictment than Mr. Calhoun, although enjoying the ablest legal counsel that money could secure, had been able to make for himself.

Eventually, these technical objections were decided adversely to the defense; the validity of the Oliver Grand Jury was never successfully attacked. But the technical objections raised caused delays which the defense was able to put to good account. While the prosecution was battling to force the graft cases to trial on their merits, the graft defense was conducting a publicity campaign to misrepresent and undermine the prosecution. The astonishing success of these efforts were to appear later. By 1909, for example, in the city which when the graft prosecution opened, the practically universal sentiment was for the crushing out of corruption, there was strong opinion that the prosecution of influential offenders had gone too far, had been injudiciously conducted, was “hurting business,” and that for the good of the community the graft cases should be dropped.[269]

The evident policy of the defense was to undermine the prosecution and create public opinion against it, until both prosecution and community should be worn out, and made to quit.

The principal attack was through the newspapers. The prosecution had not been long at work before the weekly papers, with few exceptions, were devoting the bulk of their space to ridiculing and vilifying all who were in any way responsible for the graft exposures and impuning their motives.

What these publications received for their work is indicated by the subsidies paid one of the least of San Francisco weekly papers—a publication since suspended—the Mission Times.

In January, 1907, a man by the name of Williams purchased the Times for seventy-five dollars, giving his unsecured note for that amount. In less than a month the new proprietor had received $500 from an agent of the United Railroads. Later on, he received a regular subsidy of $250 a week, something more than $1,000 a month, which continued for thirteen weeks. The subsidy was later reduced to fifty dollars a week. But during the interim between the weekly subsidy contracts, lump sums were paid. It is estimated that in little over a year, Williams received from agents of the United Railroads upwards of $7,000. The Times at first covertly, and later openly, opposed the prosecution. If the unimportant Mission Times, which at the opening of the year 1907 had changed hands for seventy-five dollars, received upwards of $7,000 from agents of the defense, the not unreasonable question may be asked, what did more important weekly papers, whose graft prosecution policy was practically the same as that of the Times, receive? In this connection it is pertinent to say that the majority of these publications gave evidence during 1907, of a prosperity that was quite as mysterious, if not as suggestive, as had been the prosperity of the Schmitz-Ruef Supervisors during 1906.

As has been seen, the entire daily press of San Francisco was, in the beginning, heartily in accord with the prosecution. Gradually, however, The Examiner and The Chronicle[270] shifted their policy. Even while The Chronicle was backing the prosecution in its editorial columns, its reports of the proceedings at the various hearings were colored in a way well-calculated to undermine Langdon and his associates.[271] Gradually the covert opposition of its news columns became the open editorial policy of the paper.

But the most effective opposition came from The Examiner. The Examiner supported the prosecution until the conviction of Schmitz and the change in the municipal administration. Failure to dictate the selection of Mayor and Supervisors may have had more or less influence in the change of policy. At any rate, the invention of The Examiner’s writers and artists was tortured to make the prosecution appear to disadvantage.

The most tawdrily clever of The Examiner’s efforts were the so-called “Mutt cartoons.” The cartoons appeared from day to day, a continuous burlesque of the work of the prosecutors, and of the graft trials.

Heney was pictured as “Beaney;” Detective Burns, as Detective “Tobasco;” James D. Phelan as “J. Tired Feeling;” Rudolph Spreckels, as “Pickles;” Superior Judges Dunne and Lawlor, before whom the graft cases were heard, as Judge “Finished” and Judge “Crawler,” respectively. In these “Mutt cartoons” every phase of the prosecution was ridiculed. For example, when the excitement over the graft trials was at its height, there were rumors that the assassination of Heney or Langdon would be attempted. In ridiculing this, The Examiner pictured “Beaney” with a cross on his neck where the bullet was to strike. A few weeks later, during the progress of one of the graft trials, Heney was shot down in open court, the bullet taking practically the same course which in the “Mutt” cartoon The Examiner had pictured. After the shooting of Heney, The Examiner discontinued the anti-prosecution “Mutt cartoons.”

Mr. William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner did effective service in discrediting the graft prosecution. But Mr. Hearst, with curious inconsistency, outside California, gave the prosecution his personal endorsement.

In his Labor Day address at the Jamestown Exposition, September 3, 1907, for example, Mr. Hearst among other pleasing observations on the work of the San Francisco Graft Prosecution, said: “You hear much today of how a Mayor of San Francisco has fallen, but you hear little of how powerful public service corporations tempted a wretched human being with great wealth and brought a once respected man to ruin and disgrace. You hear much of how a Mayor elected on a Union Labor ticket is in jail, but little of the fact that it was an honest District Attorney, elected on the same Union Labor ticket, who put him there, an honest District Attorney, who is doing his best to put beside the Mayor the men really responsible for all this debauchery and dishonor. While it is the fashion to criticise San Francisco just now, I venture to assert that the only difference between San Francisco and some other cities is that San Francisco is punishing her corruptionists. There is many an official elsewhere who has stolen office or dealt in public properties who would fare like Schmitz if there were more honest and fearless District Attorneys like Union Labor Langdon.”

Later on, after Ruef had been sent to the penitentiary, an article on the San Francisco Graft Prosecution appeared in one of Mr. Hearst’s magazines.[272] The article was printed under the signature of Mr. Edward H. Hamilton, one of the ablest of Mr. Hearst’s employees. Mr. Hamilton gave the credit for the work of the graft prosecution to Mr. Hearst and The Examiner. The men whose steadfastness of purposes and high integrity had made even approach to the prosecution of influential offenders possible, upon whom Mr. Hearst’s Examiner had poured ridicule and abuse, were more or less favorably mentioned in the article, but Mr. Hearst was given the bulk of the credit for what the prosecution had accomplished. In California, where The Examiner’s treatment of the prosecution was well known, Mr. Hamilton’s article was received with some amusement and not a little resentment.[273]

Although, with few exceptions, the policy of the San Francisco press was adverse to the prosecution, the principal interior papers gave Langdon and his associates loyal support. But eventually a chain of papers covering the greater part of the interior of northern and central California was enlisted on the side of the defense. The papers were started or purchased by a newspaper publishing company known as the Calkins Syndicate.

The Calkins people had for several years been identified with a number of unimportant papers, printed in the interior. Suddenly, from publishing obscure weeklies and dailies, the Calkins Syndicate became one of the most important, if not the most important, publishing concern in California. A modern printing plant, one of the finest on the Pacific Coast, was installed at San Francisco. The establishment took over much of the printing of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, including the printing of the railroad corporation’s monthly, The Sunset Magazine. The Sacramento Union, the most important California morning newspaper printed north of San Francisco, and the Fresno Herald, an afternoon daily, were purchased outright. A bid was made for the San Francisco Post,[274] but terms could not be made. The Calkins people accordingly started the San Francisco Globe, an afternoon daily newspaper. Less important papers were established at various points. In an incredibly short period, the Calkins Syndicate had a chain of newspapers covering the greater part of northern and central California.

The distinctive feature of these publications was their opposition to the San Francisco graft prosecution. But the abuse of the Calkins newspapers was not so cleverly presented as in the Examiner, nor so adroitly handled as in the Chronicle. So violent were the Calkins papers' attacks, in fact, that they injured rather than assisted the defendants’ cause. This was generally recognized. The Calkins Syndicate, after losing whatever effectiveness it may have had, eventually went into bankruptcy.[275]

Almost as effective as the newspaper publicity against the prosecution, was the opposition of fashionable social circles and of the clubs. The graft defendants became much in evidence at the best clubs in the city. To be sure, their persistent appearance all but disrupted some of the clubs, members in sympathy with the enforcement of the law openly objecting to their presence.[276] But in the end, the defendants prevailed and were loudly apparent at the principal clubs of the city even while under the inconvenience of indictment.

San Francisco’s so-called fashionable society was, during the graft trials, practically organized as an adjunct of the defense. Those in accord with the prosecution were cut off visiting lists. Some of the non-resident indicted ones brought their families to San Francisco. Their wives and daughters at once became prominent in social matters. It was the refinement of the custom of bringing in “the wife and innocent children” of the defendant at a criminal trial.

This character of defense was most effective. The charming entertainment of those wives and daughters of indicted magnates who engaged in the social publicity campaign in the interests of their troubled male relations, went far toward building up public opinion against their prosecutors. The supporters of the prosecutors were treated with scant ceremony. To be a supporter of the prosecution was not regarded as “good form.” All in all, the social side was one of the cleverest and most effective features of the publicity campaign carried on by the graft defense.[277]

The boycott of those in sympathy with the prosecution extended to the larger business world as well as to exclusive social circles. When, for example, the American battleship fleet visited San Francisco on its tour around the world in 1908, the committee appointed by the Mayor to arrange fitting reception and entertainment of its visitors, organized by making James D. Phelan, prominently associated with Mr. Spreckels in the Graft Prosecution, chairman.

That Mr. Phelan should be made head of the committee, or even identified with it, gave serious offense to the large business and financial interests that did not approve the prosecution.[278] The large interests thus offended refused to contribute to the reception fund. William C. Ralston, United States Sub-Treasurer at San Francisco, and treasurer of the Fleet Reception Committee, reported to the committee that several large banks and public service corporations would not contribute to the reception of the fleet unless Mr. Phelan left the reception committee.[279]

The committee, refusing to submit to this arrogant dictation, accordingly proceeded to the entertainment of the fleet without assistance from the anti-prosecution financiers and institutions. The smaller merchants, assisted by those banks and enterprises which had not been offended by the proceedings against the corrupters of the municipal government, contributed upwards of $75,000. The reception to the fleet was thus carried to successful conclusion without the assistance of the graft defense element.

In the work of undermining the prosecution, the humbler circles of municipal life were not neglected. The claquer in labor union, and wherever groups of laboring men and women met, was quite as active as his prototype at club and exclusive function. In labor circles the prosecution was described as a movement to discredit labor and to disrupt the unions. Here, Rudolph Spreckels was described as the unrelenting foe of labor organizations. At club and function, on the other hand, the prosecution was condemned as agent of “labor organization and anarchy,” and Mr. Spreckels denounced as a man who had “gone back on his class.” In all quarters stories were circulated, questioning Spreckels’ motives. The most persistent charge against him was that he had started a street-car system of his own, and had instituted the graft prosecution to drive the United Railroads out of business. This story was told and retold, although the purposes for which Mr. Spreckels had contemplated engaging in the street-car business were well known.[280] It was quite as well known, too, that the briberies alleged against officials of the United Railroads were committed long after the graft prosecution had been inaugurated.

Heney[281] was also made target for criticisms. His whole life was gone over in the search for flaws. It was discovered that in self-defense he had, years before, shot a man in Arizona.[282] This was made basis of a charge that Heney had committed murder. The new version of the Arizona incident was fairly shouted from San Francisco housetops.

Heney was denounced as a “special prosecutor, a human bloodhound, engaged in hounding of men to the penitentiary.” It was charged against him that he had received excessive fees from corporations; that he had accepted fees from the Federal government while acting as deputy to the San Francisco District Attorney, and that therefore his San Francisco employment was illegal;[283] that he had been a drunkard.

A most effective attack consisted in charging connection of the graft prosecution with the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company.

This institution closed its doors during the 1907 panic. It had carried an enormous volume of deposits. Thousands of homes were affected. The California Safe Deposit and Trust Company was, as a result, very unpopular. Stories were circulated that the company had backed the prosecution, and had contributed funds for its work. J. Dalzell Brown, one of the leading spirits of the company, was also described as one of the prosecution’s backers. It was shown at the Calhoun[284] trial that neither Brown nor his company had contributed a dollar toward the prosecution fund. Nevertheless, persistent reports that the prosecution had had this support, unquestionably had its effect upon the losing depositors. Hiram W. Johnson had acted as Brown’s attorney. Johnson had appeared as assistant to the District Attorney at a number of the graft trials. Johnson was condemned for taking the case of a criminal guilty of the offenses charged against Brown. Mr. Johnson’s critics did not, however, condemn the attorneys who had taken the cases of the alleged bribe-givers.

Another charge was that the prosecution was hurting business; that the material prosperity of California demanded that the proceedings be stopped; that capital would not seek investment in California until the disturbance caused by the prosecution had subsided.

Every move of the prosecution was made subject of criticism. Announcement, for example, that immunity had been given the Supervisors was received by the anti-prosecution press with a storm of protest, and used by the pro-defense claque most effectively.

The treatment accorded Ruef was subject of constant objection and criticism. During the period of Ruef’s apparent co-operation with the prosecution, when he was in custody of the elisor, the pro-defense press harped on the uselessness of the expense of keeping Ruef in the luxury of a private jail.[285] The Chronicle even went so far as to say it would be well if Ruef forfeited his bail, provided the bail were set high enough. Ruef was, at the time, thought to be a willing witness for the prosecution. That the case of The People would be weakened were he to leave the State did not seem to appeal to the Chronicle. Later on, when it became evident that Ruef was not assisting the prosecution, there were outcries against the alleged cruel treatment that had been imposed upon him during his confinement in the custody of the elisor.

But this potent and far-reaching opposition did not cause a moment’s hesitation on the part of the prosecution. The work of bringing influential offenders before trial juries went steadily on. As soon as the Schmitz extortion case had been disposed of, Louis Glass of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, the first of the indicted capitalists to face a jury, was brought to trial.

CHAPTER XIX.
The Glass Trials and Conviction.

As in all the graft cases, there had been in Mr. Glass’s defense technical attack upon the validity of the Grand Jury, demurrers, and other delaying moves. But point by point the prosecution had beaten down opposition, and by the time the Schmitz extortion case had been disposed of, District Attorney Langdon and his associates were able to proceed with the trial of Glass.[286]

The District Attorney’s office was represented by Heney. D. M. Delmas and T. C. Coogan appeared for Mr. Glass.

There were none of the difficulties in securing the jury, as were experienced in the later graft trials. The Glass jury was sworn two days after the trial opened.

Dr. Boxton took the stand and testified, with a minutia of detail, how the bribe had been paid to him. Dr. Boxton was the first of the Supervisors to testify before trial jury and public, of his corruption. During the next year and a half San Francisco was to hear the story repeated time after time from the lips of sixteen men who had occupied the supervisorial office. But Boxton was the first. The spectacle of a man testifying that he had taken bribes and betrayed the city was new; it was astonishing, thrilling with sensation.

Boxton’s position was emphasized by his elevation, on the day of the beginning of his testimony, to the mayoralty office. He was spared by neither prosecution nor defense. He was kept on the witness stand for hours. The prosecution treated him with coldness, making no attempt to palliate or excuse his conduct. The defense harassed him with subtle ridicule.

During the greater part of Boxton’s examination, the Board of Supervisors was in session. As Mayor of San Francisco, Boxton was supposed to preside over the Board. He was repeatedly dragged from presiding desk to witness stand, and hustled back from witness stand to presiding desk, the whole city watching every move.

“You were elected Mayor of this city?” inquired Delmas after one of the witness’ shameful admissions.

“Through no fault of mine,” replied Boxton wearily.

But in spite of the ridicule and the hammering, Boxton testified positively to receiving money from Halsey to influence him against casting his supervisorial vote to give the Home Telephone Company a franchise. That Halsey paid the money was not seriously disputed. The question raised by the defense was, did the bribe money necessarily come through Halsey’s superior, Glass?

This question the prosecution attempted to meet. Halsey, it was shown, was employed under Glass in an inferior position and had neither authority nor power to use the corporation’s funds without authorization.

Mr. Glass’s position in the company was an important one. He had long been vice-president and general manager. After the death of John I. Sabin, president of the company, in October, 1905, Glass became acting president, a position which he held until Henry T. Scott assumed the duties of that office late in February, or early in March, 1906. The evidence went to show that at the time of the alleged bribery transactions, Glass was serving as general manager and acting president. Officials of the company testified that during Sabin’s administration checks had been signed by “John I. Sabin by Zimmer,” or “E. J. Zimmer for the president,” and countersigned by the treasurer. Zimmer was Sabin’s confidential clerk.

During Mr. Glass’s administration, after Mr. Sabin’s death, up to the time that Mr. Scott took hold, the checks were signed by Mr. Glass, or Mr. Zimmer for Mr. Glass, bearing as well the treasurer’s signature.

Zimmer had testified before the Grand Jury that at the direction of Mr. Glass, he had drawn large sums in currency from the banks, and given the money to Halsey. Halsey[287] gave no vouchers for this money which he received from Zimmer. The amounts were accounted for at the company’s office by tags in the cash drawer.

The testimony which Zimmer had given before the Grand Jury connected Glass directly with the large amounts which Halsey, without giving vouchers, had received from the telephone company’s treasury at the time of the bribery transactions. The prosecution depended upon Zimmer’s testimony to solidify their case. But when Zimmer was called to the stand, he refused to testify.

Zimmer based his refusal upon the ground that in his opinion the Grand Jury had indicted a number of gentlemen upon evidence which Mr. Zimmer regarded as insufficient, and that he would not, to protect his own interests, testify.[288]

The court instructed Mr. Zimmer that his position was untenable. The witness continued obdurate. The court sentenced him to serve five days in the county jail for contempt.

After his five-days’ term had expired, Zimmer was again called to the stand, and again did he refuse to testify; again was he sentenced to serve in the county jail, this time for one day. Upon the expiration of this second sentence, Zimmer was for the third time called to the stand, for the third time refused to testify. For the third time was he adjudged guilty of contempt. His third sentence was to serve five days in the county jail and pay a fine of $500. Before he had served his time, the Glass trial had been concluded. Zimmer, therefore, escaped testifying against his associate, Glass. But for his refusal, he served eleven days in the county jail and paid a fine of $500. The maximum penalty for the crime of bribery alleged against Glass was fourteen years penal servitude. Mr. Zimmer thus served fewer days than Mr. Glass might have been sentenced to serve years had he been convicted. The testimony which Zimmer[289] gave before the Grand Jury, was not presented to the trial jury.

Nevertheless, the prosecution considered that it had made out a strong case, but Mr. Heney and his associates had reckoned without D. M. Delmas, Glass’s chief counsel. The defense introduced no evidence, but Delmas, in a masterful argument, raised the question of reasonable doubt. He insisted that Glass had not necessarily given the money to Halsey. He argued that several others of the officials of the company could have authorized the transaction. By an elaborate chain of reasoning, for example, Delmas insisted that if the money had been given Halsey at all, President Henry T. Scott[290] could have provided for it.

The jury, after being out forty-seven hours, failed to agree. At the final ballot it stood seven for conviction and five for acquittal. That Delmas’s argument had strong influence upon those who voted for acquittal was indicated by their published interviews. If these statements are to be credited, Glass escaped conviction because a number of the jurors held to the opinion that some telephone company official other than Glass could have authorized the passing of the bribe money.[291]

As soon as the prosecution could bring Glass to second trial, impaneling of the jury began.[292] Glass, at this second trial, was tried for the alleged bribery of Supervisor Lonergan. The trial was in many particulars a repetition of the first. Again, there was no serious attempt to dispute that Halsey had paid Lonergan the bribe money. Zimmer again refused to testify against his superior, and was again committed for contempt. But the prosecution was careful at the second trial to show beyond the possibility of the question of a doubt that neither President Henry T. Scott, nor any other official of the Pacific States Telephone Company, other than Glass, could have authorized the payment of the bribe money.

By the minute books of the corporation, the prosecution showed that checks drawn by the corporation on San Francisco banks were to be signed “by the assistant treasurer or his deputy, and by the president, or his private secretary, E. J. Zimmer, for him, or by the general manager.” As for Mr. Scott, the prosecution showed by the testimony of Assistant Treasurer Eaton[293] of the telephone company that the corporation did not notify the banks to honor President Scott’s signature until February 27, which was after the alleged bribery of Supervisor Lonergan had been consummated.

The jury, after being out less than a half hour, brought in a verdict of guilty.

Pending his appeal to the Appellate Court, Glass was confined in the county jail.

Of the Pacific States Telephone bribing charges, those against T. V. Halsey remained to be disposed of.

Even while the second Glass trial was under way, Halsey’s trial for the bribery of Supervisor Lonergan was begun. There had been the same delaying tactics to ward off appearance before a jury which had characterized the other graft cases. The impaneling of the trial jury was, however, finally undertaken. But the proceedings were suddenly brought to a close. Halsey, after eight jurors had been secured to try him, was stricken with appendicitis.

On this showing, his trial was postponed. Later on, Mr. Halsey was threatened with tuberculosis, which further delayed proceedings against him. Until after the defeat of the Graft Prosecution in 1909, Mr. Halsey’s health did not permit of his being tried. His trials under the new administration of the District Attorney’s office, resulted in acquittals.

Mr. Halsey, in August, 1913, still survives both the appendicitis attack and the threatened tuberculosis.

CHAPTER XX.
The Ford Trials and Acquittals.

The conviction of Glass, following immediately upon the overthrow of the Schmitz-Ruef municipal administration, and coupled with the pitiful position in which, all recognized, Halsey would find himself before a jury, stirred the graft defense to astonishing activity. Although it developed later that the defendants had had their agents at work even before the bringing of indictments,[294] little was suspected of the extent of their labors until after the Glass trials. During the trials of General Tirey L. Ford, who followed Glass before trial jurors, however, the work of the defendants’ agents and their methods became notorious. From the opening of the Ford trials, the representatives of the various graft defendants who congregated in the courtroom ranged in social and professional standing from the highest priced lawyers of the character of Alexander King, President Calhoun’s law partner, down through layers of the typical, criminal lawyer of the Earl Rogers-Porter Ashe[295] grade, to characters of the type of Harry Lorenstzen,[296] notoriously known throughout Central California as the “Banjo-Eyed Kid,” and Dave Nagle, the gun-fighter, who numbered among his accomplishments the slaying of Judge Terry. Nor were the defending corporations alone represented. The Southern Pacific, although none of its officials were under indictment, had men at work in the interest of the defense.[297]

With such motley array of attorneys, detectives, gunfighters and agents, District Attorney Langdon and his associates contended until, what was practically the ending of the graft prosecution, the defeat of Heney for District Attorney at the municipal election of 1909.

Ford had been indicted for his alleged part in the bribery of the Supervisors by the United Railroads to secure its over-head trolley permit. At his first trial, Ford answered to the charge of bribing former Supervisor Lonergan. Lonergan had not been long on the stand before the defense demonstrated the astonishing effectiveness of the work of its agents.

Earl Rogers, for the defendant, on cross-examination, presented a paper signed by Lonergan within the month, in which Lonergan set forth that when he voted for the trolley permit he had not been promised, nor did he understand, there would be any monetary consideration allowed him—nor any other member of the board—for voting in favor of the measure.

Lonergan had testified on direct examination that some time prior to the granting of the permit, Supervisor Wilson had brought word to him there would be $8000 for him in the passing of the trolley ordinance. Later Wilson had told him that the amount would be $4000 only. This amount, Lonergan testified, Gallagher had paid him. Lonergan’s statement, signed a few days before the opening of the trial, to the effect that when he voted to grant the United Railroads its trolley permit no monetary consideration had been promised him, came as a surprise to the prosecution.

The story of the manner in which the paper came to be in Rogers’s possession, however, was quite as sensational as the statement itself. Lonergan, the driver of a bakery wagon, confronted by the keenest practitioners at the California bar, harassed and confused, stammered out explanation of the manner in which he had been induced to sign the paper in Rogers’s hands.

Long before he had signed it, one Dorland had secured introduction to him. Dorland had represented himself to be a magazine writer, who held that the ousted Supervisors had been misused. Dorland stated that his purpose was to set the Supervisors right in the East. He represented that he was to prepare an article on the San Francisco graft situation from an independent, unbiased standpoint. Dorland made himself very agreeable to Lonergan. He took the unhappy fellow to lunch. He gave him and members of his family automobile trips and expensive dinners. Lonergan finally signed the statement which the agreeable “magazine writer” was to use in his behalf, and with which the graft defense[298] confronted him on the witness stand.

The statement which Lonergan had signed was a rambling account of conditions in San Francisco, the one pertinent paragraph touching upon the United Railroads graft being buried in a multitude of words.

“And you intended to say to all the readers of the magazine what you set forth over your signature there?” demanded General Ford’s attorney.

“Yes,” replied Lonergan, weakly, “but when I made that statement I was not under oath.”

Then Lonergan was confronted with the affidavit which he had signed at the opening of the Graft Prosecution when Langdon was fighting against Ruef, Acting Mayor Gallagher and the Schmitz-Ruef Supervisors to keep himself in the office of District Attorney and Ruef out. In that affidavit Lonergan set forth that he had “never committed a felony of any kind or character,” and had “never been a party thereto.”[299]

“I didn’t read that paper at the time I signed it,” faltered the miserable witness. “I did not consider I was committing a crime when I signed that document.”

“If it be a crime to have me sign that,” he continued in answer to General Ford’s attorney’s merciless hammering, “then I must have (committed a felony).”

Then on re-direct examination Lonergan testified as to how he had come to sign the affidavit. George B. Keane, clerk of the Board of Supervisors, Ruef’s right-hand man, secretary of the Sunday-night caucuses, had, Lonergan testified, said to him, “Tom, there is a document across the street there for you to go over and sign. All the boys are signing it.” Lonergan testified that he had gone over and signed it. “I am almost sure,” Lonergan continued, “that some of them said to me that it was a matter of form, merely eulogizing the board.”

“When proper inducements or circumstances occur,” sneered General Ford’s attorney, “you will testify falsely concerning your offenses.”

“I will not testify falsely on this stand,” replied the unhappy witness, “to whatever has happened during my term as Supervisor.”

But complicated as the position in which the prosecution found its principal witness, it might have been more complicated had all the plans of the agents for the defense been carried out.

On the night before Lonergan was to take the stand against Ford, Dorland, the alleged magazine writer, called him up by telephone and invited him “to make a night of it.” Dorland stated two women would accompany them. Before accepting the invitation, Lonergan notified Detective Burns. Burns instructed him not to go on the trip, but to meet Dorland and to take Mrs. Lonergan with him. Lonergan, with his wife, accordingly met Dorland and the two women at the appointed place. Dorland expressed his chagrin when he found Lonergan not alone.

“He said,” Lonergan testified, “he was sorry I was not alone; two nice young ladies were there.”

Lonergan’s testimony of Dorland’s dismay when the detective found that Mrs. Lonergan accompanied her husband, was received with amusement. The one-time Supervisor went on no automobile ride that evening. Thus tamely ended what the prosecution insisted was a plot to kidnap, or at least compromise, Lonergan on the eve of his appearance as a witness against General Ford.[300]

Out of this attempt to involve Lonergan, grew the scarcely less astonishing kidnaping of Fremont Older, managing editor of the San Francisco Bulletin.

Among those alleged to have participated in the Lonergan affair was an employe of the graft defense by the name of Brown. The defense had at the time two employes of that name, “Luther” and “J. C.,” the latter of whom is alleged to have been the one who co-operated with Dorland in his attempt upon Lonergan. The Bulletin, in its account of the affair, confounded Luther with J. C. Brown. Based on the Bulletin’s allegations against Luther Brown, warrants were sworn out at Los Angeles, charging Managing Editor Older with criminal libel. The manner of serving these Los Angeles warrants was characteristic of the times.

Late in the afternoon of September 27, Older, while at Heney’s office, received a telephone message that he was wanted at a prominent hotel. As he approached the hotel in response to the message, he was stopped by a number of men who claimed to be peace officers from Los Angeles. These displayed the warrant, and hustled Older into an automobile. Older demanded that he be taken before a local court. His captors promised him he should be. But instead they headed the machine for Redwood City, a town some twenty miles south of San Francisco on the line of the Southern Pacific. When Older protested a revolver was pressed against his side, and he was ordered to keep silent.

At Redwood City, Older was put on board a Los Angeles train. On the train were R. Porter Ashe and Luther Brown. Older was not permitted to communicate with his friends nor with the passengers, but was confined in a stateroom which his captors had secured.[301]

In the meantime, the entire police force of San Francisco was scouring the city for the missing man. There had been rumors that those prominent in the prosecution, Older among them, were to be made away with. Older’s unaccountable disappearance tended to confirm these rumors. His alarmed friends were prepared to act promptly when word finally reached them that Older was on the southbound train.

The train was due to reach Santa Barbara early the following morning. Arrangements were accordingly made to rescue Older at that point. When the train arrived there, deputy sheriffs were awaiting its arrival. Older was taken into court under habeas corpus proceedings. His release followed,[301] another sensation of the graft defense thereby coming to sorry ending.[302]

There were other surprises for the representatives of the prosecution at the Ford trials well calculated to confuse them. Alex. Latham, chauffeur for Ruef, whose testimony connected Ruef and Ford, during the period of the alleged bribery transactions was, when his name was called as a witness, found to be missing. He was alleged to be in Colorado.

George Starr, treasurer of the United Railroads, whose testimony was needed in the tracing of the exact amount of the bribe money paid Ruef in the overhead trolley deal, $200,000, that had been placed in Ford’s hands under somewhat peculiar circumstances, went East about the date the trial opened. The United Railroads’ cash book was sent East about the same time, and could not be produced at the trial.[303]

Then again, witnesses who had testified freely before the Grand Jury became forgetful. Supervisor Wilson, who had conveyed word to Lonergan from Gallagher that there would be $4000 in the trolley deal for Lonergan, could, when brought to the witness stand, remember nothing of the incident. Supervisor Coffey also proved equally forgetful.[304]

In the midst of these extraordinary happenings, General Ford’s trial went on, marked by repeated attacks by attorneys for the defense upon those who had been instrumental in bringing about the Graft Prosecution. Rudolph Spreckels in particular, was made object of vicious denunciation. It was recognized from the beginning that the defense was battling not for General Ford alone, but for President Calhoun, and the other officials of the United Railroads under indictment.

The State’s attorneys, target for constant abuse and ridicule at the hands of the defense, proceeded, however, to present the case of The People. In spite of sensations, the disappearance of witnesses and the forgetfulness of witnesses, the prosecution brought out testimony to show that the Supervisors had received $85,000 for their votes granting the trolley permit. By the testimony of officials of the United States Mint it was shown that Patrick Calhoun had, after the fire, but before the opening of the San Francisco banks, created a fund of $200,000 at the Mint.

None of the directors of the United Railroads who could be dragged to the stand knew anything about this $200,000. Other amounts, which the United Railroads, during the days of stress following the fire, had received at the Mint from the East, could be accounted for by the books and vouchers, but not this $200,000.[305] United Railroads employes who could be made to testify could throw no light upon its final disposition.

But the prosecution did show by the Mint officials that President Calhoun had ordered the $200,000 paid to General Ford and that it was paid to General Ford.

The following dates, brought out by the testimony, showed the receipt and suggested the disposition of the money:

May 21—Overhead trolley franchise granted by the Board of Supervisors.

May 22—$200,000 placed in the Mint to the credit of Patrick Calhoun.

May 25—General Ford drew $50,000 from the Mint which he exchanged for currency of small denominations.

July 31—General Ford drew $50,000 from the Mint, which he exchanged for currency.

August 1—The Supervisors received from Gallagher their first payment for voting to grant the overhead trolley permit. Gallagher testified that he had received the money from Ruef. The payments were in currency, the bills being of small denominations.

August 23—General Ford drew $100,000 from the Mint, which he exchanged for currency, receiving bills of large denominations.

August 24-30—The Supervisors received their final payments from Gallagher for their votes on the trolley permit. These last payments were made in bills of large denominations. Gallagher testified that he had received the money from Ruef.

The withdrawals from the Mint had been made by General Ford, on Mr. Calhoun’s instructions to the Mint officials that the payments should be made to the General.

The testimony of the Mint officials and employes was to the point and at times sensational. Nathan Selig, a clerk at the Mint, for example, assisted Eugene D. Hawkins as assistant cashier,[306] in making up a package of $50,000 in bills which were turned over to Ford. Selig fixed the time of the occurrence at “shortly after the Mayor signed the franchise bill for the overhead wire.”

“What impressed that upon your mind?” was asked him. “Because I made the remark to Mr. Hawkins, as he was going out,” replied Selig, “that that was—I thought it was, the Supervisors’ ‘bit’.”

Having traced this $200,000 from Calhoun to the Mint and from the Mint to Ford, the prosecution proved by Charles Hagerty, Ruef’s office boy, that during the weeks after the fire General Ford and Mr. Mullally of the United Railroads, had had conference with Ruef at Ruef’s office. Ruef was traced to Ford’s office. Ford’s stenographer testified, reluctantly, to Ruef’s presence there. Ford was shown to have sent warning, through his assistant Abbott, to Ruef, at the opening of the graft investigation, that the Grand Jury was taking up the matter of the United Railroads trolley privilege, that the prosecution had not made any headway, that it was thought the next step would be to lay some trap for the Supervisors.[307] That Ruef and Ford had more or less intimate relations during this period was fully established.[308] The question raised was: Did the $85,000 in currency which Ruef gave Gallagher to be paid to the Supervisors for their votes on the overhead trolley permit pass from Ford to Ruef? Did the money paid the Supervisors come out of the unaccounted-for $200,000 which had disappeared into General Ford’s possession?[309]

A word from Abe Ruef would have lifted the case out of the plane of circumstantial to that of positive evidence.

A word from General Ford would have shown the manner in which the money had been disposed.

Those who took seriously Ruef’s protestations at the time of his plea of guilty to extortion, that his life would thereafter be devoted to undoing the wrong he had wrought, looked to see the prosecution put Ruef on the stand.

The many supporters of General Ford—he was one of the most likable and popular men in the State—who still held belief in his innocence, looked to see him take the stand to clear his name by accounting for the disposition of that $200,000 which he had received, at the order of President Calhoun, from the Mint officials.

But neither Ruef nor Ford took the stand.

Later developments in the graft cases showed why the prosecution did not call upon Ruef to testify.

But no satisfactory showing has been made why General Ford did not take the stand to tell, under oath, of the disposition of that $200,000 last seen in his possession.

Heney, in an affidavit[310] acknowledged March 10, 1908, tells why Ruef was not called upon to testify.

Some ten days before the taking of testimony in the first Ford trial began, according to this affidavit, Heney had Gallagher and Ruef at his office. The two men had told stories of the passage of the ordinance granting the trolley permit, which conflicted slightly. Heney’s purpose in confronting them, he tells us in the affidavit, was that he might determine in his own mind which was right. Heney had not seen Ruef, except as he had passed him in court or corridor, since he had proved that Ruef had made misrepresentations to him in the French Restaurant cases.[311] The conversation between Ruef and Gallagher did not tend to change Heney’s opinion of the broken boss. Indeed, Heney became more firmly convinced than ever that Ruef was not acting in good faith, that he was not telling the whole truth. A few days after this meeting, Burns brought Heney word that Ruef would not testify at the Ford trial at all, unless the prosecution allowed him to withdraw his plea of guilty in the extortion case, and dismissed all the indictments against him. Heney refused to be coerced. He sent word back to Ruef that the prosecution had had sufficient evidence to convict Ford before Ruef had told anything; that if Ruef were called to the witness-stand it would be without further talk with him; that none of the cases against him would be dismissed, and that if called to the stand he could testify or not testify, as he saw fit.

That night, according to Heney, Rabbis Nieto and Kaplan, with Ruef’s attorney, Henry Ach,[312] appeared at Heney’s office. Ach announced in substance, according to Heney’s affidavit, that inasmuch as Heney and Langdon had promised to permit Ruef to withdraw his plea of guilty to the extortion charge, and then dismiss the case, as a condition upon which Ruef signed the immunity contract,[313] the time had arrived when, in justice to Ruef, this ought to be done.[314]

Heney let Ach finish.

“We might as well understand each other,” Heney then announced. “You know perfectly well that I did not at any time make any such promise to Ruef or to you, or to any one present, or to any one else on earth.”

Heney then recited the exact terms of his promise.[315] Both Kaplan and Nieto agreed with him that his statement was correct, but Kaplan insisted that he had understood that Ruef was to be allowed to withdraw his plea, arguing that he had told the truth and that his evidence was very important.

“Ruef lied to us,” answered Heney emphatically, “in the French Restaurant case, and I proved it to him in this very room, and he simply laughed in my face. He also lied to us in all the other cases. He is not entitled to immunity in any case, and I not only will not permit him to withdraw his plea of guilty in case number 305, but on the contrary it is my present intention to ask the court in that case to give him no leniency whatever, but to sentence him for the maximum term which is prescribed by law.”

Heney suggested that Ruef’s representatives take this word back to their principal.

“Ruef,” Heney concluded, “tried to job the prosecution and he has only succeeded in jobbing himself into the penitentiary.”

Ten days later, when Heney made his opening statement before the first Ford jury, he carefully refrained from stating that the prosecution expected to prove any fact that necessarily depended in whole or in part upon Ruef’s testimony. And with all San Francisco on tiptoe of expectancy,[316] Heney closed the case of The People without putting Ruef on the stand.[317]

The defense offered no evidence. The case went to the jury on the evidence which the prosecution had presented. The jury failed to agree, eight standing for acquittal, and four for conviction.

General Ford was immediately brought to trial for the second time. The case selected was for the bribery of Supervisor Jennings Phillips.

Heney, in his opening statement, announced that he did not intend to put Ruef on the stand. The second case presented was, if anything, stronger than the first, but the jury brought in a verdict of “not guilty.” General Ford was tried on a third of the indictments against him, and again was the verdict of the jury “not guilty.”

Long after, the prosecution discovered that agents for the United Railroads had systematically corrupted members of its detective force. On the evidence in the hands of the prosecution, a search warrant was secured, and the offices of the United Railroads raided in a search for stolen documents. Copies of over 2400 documents belonging to the prosecution were found. It developed that men in the employ of the prosecution were receiving regular monthly salaries from agents of the United Railroads to turn these reports over to agents of the defense for copying. The defense was in this way kept informed of all that had been reported to the prosecution regarding jurors, etc., by Burns’s own agents.[318]

At the time of the third Ford trial, for example, Heney was engaged with Ruef’s trial in the Parkside case. The Ford trial was conducted for the State by John O’Gara. One of Burns’s men, Platt by name, was appointed to assist O’Gara by advising him of the character of the men drawn for jury service. O’Gara repeatedly discovered Platt’s advice and suggestions to be unreliable. Long after it was discovered that Platt was at the time in the employ of agents for the United Railroads. The reason for the character of his advice and suggestions was then apparent.

At none of the Ford trials did the defense attempt to meet the evidence which the prosecution presented. At the third trial, the prosecution called President Calhoun and Abe Ruef[319] to the stand. But both declined to answer. The disposition of the $50,000 in currency in small bills, and of the $150,000 in currency in large bills, which passed into General Ford’s hands, at the time that currency of this exact amount and description passed into the hands of Abe Ruef, $85,000 of which Ruef distributed among the Supervisors for voting for the United Railroads trolley permit, continues as great a mystery as it was on the day that the first Ford trial opened. Ruef at the time of his plea of guilty to the extortion charge, and five years later in the story of his career published in the San Francisco Bulletin, admitted that the $200,000 that on Calhoun’s order was turned over to Ford was soon after paid to him (Ruef) because of the granting of the trolley permit. The $85,000 that Gallagher divided among the Supervisors on account of their granting this permit, Ruef has stated in his several confessions, came out of this Calhoun-to-Ford, Ford-to-Ruef $200,000.

And in California there are many who hold that in this instance, at least, Ruef is telling the truth.