Note 455 — Chapter XXVII · The San Francisco Election of 1909.
Reading edition
The following from the Fresno Republican is very good example of this excellent but unavailing newspaper support:
“Good people of San Francisco, give heed and take notice, the way it looks in the clearer perspective of an outside view.
“Francis J. Heney is a candidate for District Attorney, and he is the issue. It is stop the Graft Prosecutions, or go on with them. Your votes will determine it.
“You are ‘tired of the Graft Prosecutions.’ How long did it take you to get tired of the graft? Can you not be patient as long with militant honesty as you were with sneaking crime?
“You may stop these Prosecutions, if you so vote. But remember the whole civilized world is looking on, and will judge you by that vote. It is the good name of San Francisco that you are voting up or down.
“Banker Hellman says not. He has been to New York and he says ‘New York’ wants the Prosecutions stopped, and ‘New York’ will not lend any more money until they are stopped.
“What is Banker Hellman’s ‘New York?’ It is certain banks and certain syndicates in New York. And it is the San Francisco officials of precisely these syndicates that you are now prosecuting. Of course, Patrick Calhoun, of New York, wants the prosecution of Patrick Calhoun of San Francisco stopped. It is Banker Hellman’s privilege to have a mere pendulum which swings from his San Francisco office to his New York office and thinks it is in New York. But it is not incumbent on you to share that mental deficiency. If Banker Hellman should announce in New York that he was going to discuss the San Francisco situation, his audience would consist of the New York partners of the San Francisco grafters. He thinks that is ‘New York.’ The real New York would neither know nor care. It never heard of Banker Hellman. But if Francis J. Heney should be announced to discuss the San Francisco situation in New York, there is not a place of assemblage in the city big enough to hold the people who would want to hear and see him. The whole nation knows Heney and it has made up its mind about him. It is waiting to see what you do, before it makes up its mind about you, too.
“‘The prosecutions must stop, some time,’ to be sure. But who has earned from San Francisco the right to say when? When Francis J. Heney says it is time to quit, then it is time; not before. He has given his time, his strength, and almost his life for you. He has purified your politics and regulated your government. He has redeemed your city’s name in the esteem of the world. He is making for you a fight which no one ever had the courage, the persistence or the ability to make before. He is not tired yet and he has not surrendered yet. Suppose you leave it to him, when it is time to quit.
“People of San Francisco, the world is looking on. It cannot determine your decision. Neither can you determine what it will think of that decision, when it is made.”