Note 133 — Chapter X · Fight to Evade Trial.

On his arrival in New York after being indicted for extortion in the French Restaurant cases, Mayor Schmitz in an interview widely published at the time gave his attitude toward the French Restaurants. The Mayor explained that these restaurants had existed so long in the city that they had become a recognized adjunct of a gay life of a gay town. He had not favored their suppression, and whenever the Police Commissioners agitated the revoking of their liquor licenses, he had opposed them.

“The French restaurants did no great harm,” he is quoted as saying, “and to destroy them would be to ruin the men who had invested money in them.” The character of some of the heavy investors in these establishments was brought out in the report of the commission appointed by Mayor E. R. Taylor to ascertain causes of municipal corruption in San Francisco, as disclosed by the investigations of the Oliver Grand Jury. The report set forth:

“The business (of the French restaurants) is very prosperous, and, as is usual, the landlord shares in its prosperity. People of social prominence were known to accept a portion of the profits of such establishments, through the extremely liberal rentals paid, and the system is received with easy toleration. One of the largest of these assignation places was located on a prominent corner of the downtown shopping district where hundreds of women daily passed its doors. The building, five stories in height, had four stories devoted to the private supper bedrooms. The land was owned in trust by one of the largest, if not the largest, trust company in the West. A lease was sought and obtained by a man notorious in the line of business above described; the building was constructed by the trust company according to plans satisfactory to him for this purpose, and the enterprise was conducted there for seven years until the building was destroyed by fire. The significant thing about such a transaction is, not that there are people who are willing to accept money from such a source, or financiers willing to put trust moneys to such uses, but that the facts, though well known, did not seem to detract in the slightest from the social recognition accorded to the persons so taking a share of the profits, while the officer of the trust company which made the lease of that particular house situated in the shopping district, was appointed a regent of the State University.”