Note 372 — Chapter XXIII · The Defense Becomes Arrogant.

James D. Phelan, at the mass meeting called after the attempted assassination of Heney, summed up the Parkside case tersely: “Take the Parkside case,” he said. “There were some men who wanted a franchise which we were all willing to concede, but the boss said it would be advisable to pay for it. Instead of making a demand upon the Supervisors and an appeal to the citizens on the justice of their cause and the desirability of giving them the franchise, they continued their dickering with Ruef, and for so much money, thirty thousand dollars, I believe, he said he would give it to them. Then they ‘doctored’ their books and went down to the Crocker National Bank and got the money in green-backs, handed out to them by the teller of that institution, whose managers were stockholders in the Parkside, among them a gentleman who told you the other day to vote against the Hetch-Hetchy proposition, Mr. William H. Crocker.

“Now, finding that they could get so easily a privilege by paying for it, what did they do? They asked Mr. Ruef to give them the franchise, not on Twentieth avenue, an ungraded street, which they first wanted, but in Nineteenth avenue, which had been dedicated as a boulevard for the use of the people, which was substantially paved, and which was the only avenue we had to cross from the park to Ingleside. He said to them that that would take fifteen thousand dollars more, and they said ‘It’s a bargain.’ And these gentlemen who sought the least objectionable franchise, tell you now that they were victims, tell you now that they could not get their franchise any other way. They were glad because they were a part of the system, a part of the ‘other fellows’ of the affiliated interests. 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. It is indeed, a most economical and direct method of getting what you want from the government.”