Note 411 — Chapter XXV · The Shooting of Heney.

“A great work,” said Hiram W. Johnson, in an interview printed in the San Francisco Call, November 14, 1908, “undertaken and accomplished, though not yet wholly completed, has been retarded for a day by an assassin’s bullet. When Frank Heney fell today while in the performance of his duty, decency and the right were stricken. For two years this one man has persevered in the right, for right’s sake alone. Without compensation, sacrificing a great legal practice, giving without complaint the best years of his life, Francis J. Heney, facing all the combined forces of evil in this community and State, has stood unflinchingly at his post, making the fight that is the fight of all of us. Daily abuse and vilification have been his portion and reward. In spite of it, where a weaker man would have faltered, Heney has persevered. He has done in seeking to make equality before the law an assurance in this State, all that a strong and a brave man could do. Were he to pass away tonight he’d need no other monument than the work he has done. For generations his expose of rottenness in San Francisco, his prosecutions of the criminal rich will live and make this city and State better. He has been shot simply because he was fighting for the right. Not alone has he been wounded; but the community and the commonwealth have suffered the injury.

“We who were with him in the early days of the struggle, and knew his every mood; who saw him at his work day and night, and loved the qualities that made it possible for him to accomplish what he has, can not express our horror and indignation and anger at his attempted assassination. May God speed his recovery.”