Franklin Hichborn

“ A community does not feel the grip of the “System” until it attempts resistance. Then it knows.
San Francisco during the Ruef-Schmitz regime was no more under the heel of the “System” than when other “bosses” dominated; no more so than to-day; no more so than other communities have been and are.
The political “boss” is merely the visible sign of the “System’” existence. However powerful he may appear, he is, after all, but agent for the “System.” ”

“ If the state fails to prove that Ruef will stand before the community merely as a moral leper, loathsome to be sure, and despicable almost beyond human conception, but yet not proved guilty of that for which the law prescribes punishment in state’s prison. If proper proof cannot be made he must, of course, be acquitted of this crime and at once put on trial for another. Nothing is gained by society by the conviction even of the most unmitigated scoundrel on insufficient testimony. ”

“ If the very minions of justice do injustice, as between Abe Ruef and Convict No. 231,323, every man in that vast prison will be taught that he is the victim not of justice, but of force and favoritism. And if Ruef, at the expiration of a bare year, were to be paroled out, every other convict, whose very application can not be heard until he has served half his term, will know that he is suffering the penalty, not of his crime, but of his poverty and friendlessness. Shall Abe Ruef be suffered to teach that lesson? Shall he corrupt San Quentin prison as he did San Francisco? ”

“ Every decent American who has the honor and interest of the country at heart should join not only in putting a stop to the cause of violent crime of which this man’s act is but one of the symptoms, but also in stamping out the hideous corruption in which men like this would-be assassin are bred and flourish, and that can only be done by warring as Heney has warred relentlessly against every man who is guilty of corrupt practices without any regard to his social standing and his prominence in the world of politics or the world of business. ”

“ The people of San Francisco have been sorely tried. Fire and earthquake we cannot help, but the unhappy city has been made the prey of a set of conscienceless thieves who have done nothing since our great calamity beyond promoting schemes to fill their own pockets. Our streets, our sewers, our schools and our public buildings have been neglected, but the sale of permits and franchises, the working of real estate jobs and the market for privileges of every variety have been brisk and incessant. Officials have grown rich: Some of them are spending money like a drunken sailor. ”

“ Your pamphlet merely attacks the technical authority of one of the attorneys for the prosecution, incidentally abusing two judges. This is not the course of an innocent man. It is the course of a guilty man who desires to divert the attention of the tribunal of public opinion. The tradition is here fulfilled of the attorney’s instructions to the barrister acting for his guilty client, ‘No case; abuse the opposing counsel.’ I am compelled now to assume that you have no case, because all that your expensive pamphlet does is to abuse one of the counsel for the prosecution. ”

“ Like all good American citizens, I hold your husband in peculiar regard for the absolutely fearless way in which he has attacked and exposed corruption without any regard to the political or social prominence of the offenders or to the dangerous character of the work. Your husband has taken his life in his hands in doing this great task for our people and is entitled to the credit and esteem, and above all, to the heartiest support of all good citizens. ”

“ Spreckels is a grafter. Of course, Fickert is Calhoun’s man, just as Heney is Spreckels’s man. They are all out for graft. But if we are to have grafting, let’s keep the graft in our own class. Why should you vote to let Spreckels’s men do the grafting? You have a candidate of your own. Vote for him. It is only a fight between millionaires anyhow, and a toss-up which is right. Let us vote for the man of our class. ”

“ Is there no man in the list of appointees to whom in pride we may all yield our praise? Is there no man among the 3,300 prisoners in San Quentin and Folsom who justly can arouse efforts in his behalf? Or is the sole test of official action by the Prison Directors of California or the Chief Executive of the State to be the disregard of every other man’s rights and the granting to Ruef alone of a privilege that none other enjoys? ”

“ These giants in crime are perfectly willing that the physical life of the weak men they use shall be fed into the jails of the State to appease public wrath exactly as they have been willing to use up the moral life of these men to satisfy their own greedy needs in the Board of Supervisors. Profiting by the mistakes of previous prosecutions, this office has struck straight at the very roots of public graft: at the crooked public service corporations; but which of the criminals were to be allowed to give evidence for the State and enjoy its alluring protection ”

“ From one end of the State to the other, Judge Dunne was warmly commended as a jurist and a man. “The name of Judge Dunne,” said the Pasadena News, “stands in California honored among honest men because of the enemies he has made. Every politician and every newspaper that has defended bribery and sought to embarrass the graft prosecution is against Judge Dunne. They stocked a political convention against him. Judge Dunne’s defeat in San Francisco would be a disgrace to that city and a reflection on the honor and intelligence of the people of California.” ”

“ I regret that your recent identification with the Citizens’ Alliance and with the corporations anxious to encompass the defeat of a candidate in a political campaign should have made you so far forget the regard for truth, justice and decency which should characterize men in our profession, as to have induced you to take the chance of ruining for life the reputation and standing of one who is not rightfully amenable to your charge, and who has not otherwise heretofore given you the slightest private or personal provocation for your savage and mendacious attack. ”

“ It is doubtless true that there are plenty of men in this community who regard the crime of bribery lightly, and are ready to defend it on the ground that laxity in the conduct of municipal affairs made it necessary to resort to it or abandon all enterprise. But the great majority of citizens take the sound view that both briber and bribed are equally guilty and equally deserving of punishment, and utterly refuse to accept the excuse that the corporations which have been systematically debauching city officials were forced to that course. ”

“ They were glad to pay their money, which was a paltry sum to them, in order to perpetuate the rule of Ruef; that they could go to him on any other occasion to get an extension, or a privilege or a franchise, or anything that they wanted, by simply paying for it. It would be the simplest form of government, my friends, to have somebody sitting in a place of power and pass out to you what you want. It would save you the expense of a campaign, it would save you the advertising in the newspapers, it would save you the cost of mailing a circular to every voter. ”

“ Anything to delay trial and judgment is the policy of the accused bribe givers. Every day’s proceedings in the retrial of Glass provides ample proof to convince the most skeptical citizen that the last thing desired by the men charged with debauching the boodle Board of Supervisors is prompt determination of the issues on their merits, and every pettifogging move for delay, every cunning attempt to betray the court into technical error is confession of a case too weak to be given to a fair jury on a plain showing of the facts. ”

“ There will be no tremor in the finger of scorn that points past the miserable wretch that did the shooting to the men that inspired it. A worthless crank, of course. It always is. Dirty hands for dirty work. But softer hands and keener brains plan it. And the community will waste no wrath on the miserable tool, now cowering in jail. It was not he who has dogged the steps of Francis J. Heney these two years with hired thugs. It was not he who has filled the courtrooms with professional ruffians. It was not he who dynamited Gallagher—or hired it done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More than two years ago I expressed what I write to-day—that for the sake of society and the unfortunates confined in prison, Ruef must be treated like all others similarly situated. To yield because of fear to the persuasion, cajolery or the threats of a powerful prisoner, is to cause the iron to enter the soul of every obscure and friendless prisoner, and to make every other one of the 3,300 men in our jails know that even in prisons class distinctions prevail, and to add to the bitterness and the hopelessness of men confined. ”

“ San Francisco has received a sad blow and the cause of equality before the law a great setback, but be of good cheer and take fresh courage, you many thousands of good men and women who have joined in this fight for the maintenance of the purity and protection of our homes and the uplifting of the moral standards of our city!
“We have been defeated in this election, but the sober moral sense of the community will again reassert itself and San Francisco will vindicate herself before the world. ”

“ The spectacle of the entire legislative body of a city confessing to the acceptance of great bribes is astonishing. Their continuance in office and consultation with the good citizens as to the best methods of restoring good government is unique. In many parts of the country there is outspoken disapproval of the course which is being taken, and loud declarations that if there were any good citizenship in San Francisco the confessed rogues would be driven out of office and hustled into the penitentiary. It is declared that in granting ‘immunity’ to these Supervisors the city is again disgraced. ”

“ But it is, if anything, an even more evil and dreadful thing to have the merchants, the business men, the captains of industry accessories to crime and shielders and supporters of criminals; it is an even more dreadful thing to see the power of men high in State politics, high in finance, high in the social life of the rich and fashionable, united to stifle the prosecution of offenders against civic integrity if these offenders happen to be their friends and associates ”

“ Said the Examiner in its issue of May 16, 1906: “It looks very much as if Patrick Calhoun, Thornwell Mullally and their pals of the United Railroads had sneaked up behind San Francisco just as she lay wounded from earthquake and conflagration. In the guise of helping her, they were caught picking her pocket. If the Supervisors aid and abet them, the people will be warranted in setting up their effigies in lasting bronze, a group of everlasting infamy, with the inscription: ‘THESE MEN LOOTED SAN FRANCISCO AT THE TIME OF THE GREAT FIRE OF 1906.’” ”