Note 273 — Chapter XVIII · The Real Fight Begins.
Reading edition
The Sacramento Bee, in an editorial article, “Laureling the Brow of a Harlequin ‘Reformer’,” said of Mr. Hamilton’s claims for Hearst:
“The San Francisco Examiner is advertising an article by Edward H. Hamilton in the July Cosmopolitan—an article which is a tissue of the most shameless misrepresentations from beginning to end—an article which falsely and most mendaciously credits the conviction and imprisonment of Abraham Ruef to William Randolph Hearst.
“The Cosmopolitan is a Hearst magazine; Hamilton, a Hearst writer. Undoubtedly in New York many will believe Hamilton has written the truth. Every man in California knows otherwise.
“It is strange that a writer with the ability and the reputation of Edward H. Hamilton would for any consideration write an article so brazenly false that one marvels at the audacity alike of the eulogist and the laureled.
“For Hearst had no more to do with the fate of Ruef than Ruef’s own lawyers. He labored on the same side—to make the graft prosecution so unpopular that no conviction of the guilty could result. Day in and day out the Examiner reeked with slanders aimed at the men who were endeavoring to place Ruef behind the bars.
“Day in and day out, the most malicious cartoons were published against Spreckels, Heney, Phelan, Burns and all who were battling for the punishment of public and semi-public scoundrels. Day in and day out in the Examiner Judge Wm. P. Lawlor was referred to as ‘Crawler.’
“Day in and day out the reports of the trials were so colored, so exaggerated in favor of the defense and so emasculated when the prosecution scored a point, that the Examiner was ranked with the gutter weeklies as a friend, champion and defender of the indicted, and a most venomous traitor to good government and to public honor.
“The Examiner knew the feeling against it in San Francisco. For, when Heney was shot and there was danger of mob violence, the editorial rooms of the Examiner were barricaded and the Examiner men were supplied with rifles.
“And their fears were to a certain extent justified. One of the vilest cartoons against Heney pictured ‘Beany’ in danger of his life from imaginary assassins. On ‘Beany’s’ neck was a mark to show where the bullet was to strike. By an extraordinary coincidence, the bullet that struck Heney down at the Ruef trial found almost the identical spot that a few days before had been marked on ‘Beany’s’ neck in Hearst’s humorous cartoon.
“On the night of the day that Heney was shot, indignant San Francisco in an immense mass meeting thundered its denunciation of Hearst and the Examiner. And graft-prosecution leaders found it necessary to plead with an inflamed populace to attempt no violence.
“No more ‘Beany’ cartoons made their appearance. The Examiner wrote of all connected with the graft prosecution in terms of respect. But this repentance born of fear did not prevent Californians by the thousands stopping the Examiner.
“The Cosmopolitan eulogy of Hearst in the graft-prosecution matter is a long line of known misstatements from beginning to end.
“It is humiliating to have to record that a man of Ned Hamilton’s talents could so debase them as to present in the light of a militant Paul of the graft prosecution one who was its most contemptible Judas Iscariot.
“Regrettable indeed is it that
“Poor Ned ‘must torture his invention To flatter rogues or lose his pension.’”