Note 166 — Chapter XII · Trapping of the Supervisors.

The public service corporation officials were encouraged by Spreckels and Heney to give information which would lead to the indictment and conviction of Ruef and Schmitz, and thus clean up the city. Instead of giving such information, they pretended that the rumors in regard to bribery were all baseless.

At the Pacific Union Club, where they generally lunched, Spreckels and Heney were the recipients of many kind words of encouragement and of congratulation, up to the time that Ruef plead guilty in the French-restaurant case. Immediately thereafter the atmosphere commenced to change. The indictment of some of the prominent members of the club was not pleasing. During the first trial of Glass, he and his attorneys constantly lunched at the Pacific Union Club, and many men, prominent in finance, would stop and chat ostentatiously with Glass and his lawyers, and would then ignore Spreckels and Heney, who would be sitting at a near-by table.

An attempt to keep Rudolph Spreckels out of membership in the Bohemian Club was almost successful about this time, while Drum was elected a director of the Pacific Union Club while still under indictment, and Thomas Williams, of the New California Jockey Club, one of the bondsmen for Schmitz, was elected President.