Chapter XXX · Conclusion.

After the McCarthy-Fickert election there were rumors that the graft defense, flushed with its successes in the overthrow of the prosecution, would resort to reprisals, by singling out persons prominent in the movement to enforce the law, for trumped-up charges and possible indictment. But aside from an abortive attempt to make it appear that former Supervisor Gallagher had fled the State at the behest of William J. Burns, reprisals of this nature were not attempted.

The reprisals came in more subtle form. Members of the Oliver Grand Jury which had brought the indictments against Ruef and his associates, found themselves marked men in business, political and social circles. A member of the faculty of the State University who had been active in defending the cause of the prosecution, found his salary remaining practically stationary, while his associates received material advances. When the directorate of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Company was formed, financiers who had supported the prosecution found themselves barred from directorships. It may be said, however, that the graft defense was well represented, one of the Exposition directors at least, Thornwall Mullally, having been one of those indicted in the graft cases.

When the suggestion was made that James D. Phelan be made Pacific Coast representative in President Wilson’s cabinet, at once the graft defense pack was on his track, openly naming Mr. Phelan’s assistance to the prosecution cause as reason sufficient why he should not be given the cabinet appointment.[491]

On the other hand, all danger of confinement in State prison being gone, the graft defense, through its various newspapers, urged incessantly that the past be forgotten, that San Francisco interests get together for the good of San Francisco. But this “getting together” meant the banishing from political, social, and, as far as practical, business circles, all who had sided with the prosecution, thereby giving control of all activities to sympathizers with the graft defense.

This is well recognized throughout the State, and the exclusive “get-together” movements are received with general ridicule.[492] The graft defense does not stand well in California. The “vindication” that was heralded throughout the country when the indictments were dismissed has not been accepted in California as generally as those most immediately affected could have wished.

Then again, the corporations involved in the scandals, have a heritage from the graft defense which seems destined to bring confusion upon them at every turn of their development. Late in 1912, for example, a year and a half after the trolley-graft indictments were dismissed, the United Railroads attempted readjustment of its bonded indebtedness. This could be done only with the consent of the State Railroad Commission. The Commission, willing to allow any proper adjustment upon competent showing, asked that the corporation’s books be produced. The books had, during the days of the prosecution, been sent out of the State. The United Railroads could not produce the books, and consent to its petition to readjust its financial affairs was withheld until the books should be forthcoming. Unofficial assurance was given officials of the corporation that investigation would not be made of its graft defense expenditures,[493] nor of any expenditures involved in the scandal of the alleged bribe-giving. But apparently even this assurance did not satisfy those connected with the United Railroads whose reputations, at least, were at stake.[494] The company’s books were not opened for the Commission’s inspection.

By far the greatest sufferer from the graft defense was San Francisco. Here it was demonstrated that even with a District Attorney intent upon the discharge of his sworn duty, with upright trial judges on the bench, the machinery of the criminal law broke down when men with practically unlimited means were brought to bar. To accomplish this required a four years’ contest, in which community resistance to political corruption was overcome, the people misled, their minds poisoned against that which is wholesome, and made tolerant of that which is base and bad.

The unhappy effects of this are just beginning to be understood. The evil of the graft defense will live long in San Francisco after the dismissal of the indictments. Four years after the defeat of the Graft Prosecution, Referendum petitions against State laws have been forged in San Francisco, and the laws, which had been passed by the State Legislature and signed by the Governor, have been delayed from going into effect for nearly two years, because of the forgeries. And yet, although the forgers are known, their prosecution, except in one instance, has not even been attempted. Governor Johnson has called the attention of the Attorney-General of the State to this condition, and has urged him to undertake the prosecution of these forgery cases.

Tenderloin interests at San Francisco now indicate even greater power in the community than they exerted during the worst days of Ruef-Schmitz regime. The same is in a measure true of the public service corporations.

When District Attorney Langdon announced in 1906 that public-spirited citizens would assist in meeting the expenses of running to earth the corruptionists that had San Francisco by the throat, prospect of law-enforcement through the regular channels was welcomed, and ugly talk of lynch-law prevalent at the time, ceased. The success of the graft defense meant that the efforts to reach the corrupters of the municipal government through the courts had failed. San Francisco was beaten. In the community’s present inability to protect itself against the encroachments of the public service corporations, and to correct vice conditions which are far worse than in the worst days of the Schmitz-Ruef regime, the effects of that beating are seen. San Francisco will be long in recovering from the effects of her defeat. Because of the results of it, she finds herself handicapped in her race for Pacific Coast supremacy with Los Angeles, Seattle and even Oakland. And the prospects are at the close of the year 1914, that the burden of this handicap will be increased before it is diminished. In the old days an invading army conquered a city and sacked it. The System conquered San Francisco and is exploiting it.

The defeat of the graft prosecution was a defeat for San Francisco alone. It was not a defeat for the State of California.

The evil influence of the graft defense did not reach beyond the metropolis. On the contrary, the success of the defense uncovered for the whole State the actual political conditions under which all California was laboring.

The registration of 47,945 Republicans at San Francisco to defeat Heney at the primaries, and the Republican vote of 13,766 at the final election, demonstrated the emptiness of partisan pretense. One of the immediate results was a uniting of all good citizens regardless of political affiliations for good government, and Hiram W. Johnson, Heney’s associate in the graft trials, was in 1910, elected Governor of California. Four years later, James D. Phelan, Rudolph Spreckels’s associate in financing the graft prosecution, was elected United States Senator from California, while Judge Lawlor was that year elected to the State Supreme Bench. Judge Dunne was in 1914 re-elected to the Superior Bench to serve until 1920.

Decisions from the higher courts—to the lay mind astonishing; to authorities on questions of law, vicious and unwarranted—which set free men who had been convicted of dangerous felonies; scandals which grew out of these decisions; the public’s demonstrated helplessness against them, aroused the State. By overwhelming vote California added to her Constitution a provision under which The People may by direct vote remove a corrupt or incompetent judge from the bench.

The public had assumed that men trapped in bribe-giving would be measured by a fixed rule of the law, and their proper punishment in due course be meted out to them. That anything else could be had not occurred to the average citizen.

But the astonishing performances at the graft trials, the extraordinary anti-prosecution publicity campaign, and, finally, the amazing technical defense, and the failure of the graft defendants to take the stand and manfully deny under oath the charges brought against them, opened the eyes of the public to the fact that the methods of criminal procedure were sadly inadequate.

And the further fact was emphasized that while the weak points in the methods of bringing an offender to punishment could be used to advantage by the rich man, they were unavailable to the man without the means to employ a lawyer to present the technicalities governing his case.

Out of this conviction, came agitation for reform of the methods of criminal procedure. An elaborate plan for such reform was presented to the 1909 Legislature.[495] But the machine element controlled the committee organization of both houses, and the measures were defeated.

At the 1911 session of the Legislature, after Johnson had been elected Governor, measures for the reform of the criminal procedure similar to those defeated by indirection at the 1909 session, were introduced. Many of them became laws. But, unfortunately, certain labor leaders were made to believe that the measures were aimed at Labor. This led to opposition which resulted in the defeat of several of the proposed reforms.

One important constitutional amendment was, however, presented to the people that goes far toward correcting the abuses which attended the graft trials. This amendment provides that “no judgment shall be set aside, or new trial granted in any criminal case on the ground of misdirection of the jury or the improper admission or rejection of evidence, or for error as to any matter of pleading or procedure, unless, after an examination of the entire cause including the evidence, the court shall be of the opinion that the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice.”

Not a vote was cast against this amendment in either house of the Legislature. The feeling against the use of trifling technicalities for the release of convicted criminals which the graft cases had displayed so glaringly, was shown in the popular vote on this amendment; 195,449 voted for the amendment, while only 53,958 voted against it.[496]

The San Francisco graft prosecution succeeded in sending but one of the corrupters of the municipal government to State prison. He, too, would in all probability have escaped imprisonment but for the absence from the State of a single member of the Supreme Court at a critical moment.

But the graft prosecution did something infinitely more important than the sending of a few corruptionists to cell and stripes. It awakened a State to its helplessness against a corrupt system. The People arose in rebellion against the “System,” and is laboring to throw the “System” off.

In 1910 and 1911 a political revolution was worked in California.

But the revolution had its beginning back in 1906, when Rudolph Spreckels guaranteed the expenses of the prosecution of the corrupters of the municipal government of San Francisco, and Francis J. Heney, as his share in the campaign, pledged his services.

Had there been no San Francisco graft prosecution, there would, in 1910, have been no successful political uprising in California. Hiram W. Johnson would not have been a candidate for Governor. The accomplished reforms which are the boast of the State, and the models which other States are adopting, would still be the unrealized dreams of “reformers.” The “System” would still be in the saddle.

The graft defense has left its mark of ill upon San Francisco. That city has borne the brunt of the injury because of it.

The graft prosecution, by forcing the “System” out in the open, where all its power for evil can be seen, worked California inestimable good. And here, San Francisco, in common with the whole State, gains also.