Note 72 — Chapter IV · San Francisco After the Fire.

Acting Mayor Gallagher was emphatic in declaring that no vigilance committee should disgrace San Francisco. The interior press, which was following the San Francisco situation closely and from an independent standpoint, advised Mayor Gallagher that the best way to prevent organization of such a committee would be to enforce the laws. Said the Stockton Record:

“If Acting Mayor Gallagher and his associates wish to abate the agitation in favor of a committee of safety for San Francisco, they should do less talking and take more energetic action against the thug element. The police department of the afflicted city is now virtually on trial. It is even under suspicion of offenses graver than that of inefficiency. One or two more crimes of violence with well-known people as victims will fire the public indignation of San Francisco to a point where incapable officers will be forced aside and an authority created to meet the grave emergency confronting respectable citizenry.”

The Stockton Independent went even further. Said that paper of the San Francisco situation:

“Acting Mayor Gallagher of San Francisco declares there shall be no vigilance committee and no lynching in San Francisco. If he and the police are unable to prevent daily murders, or attempted murders, by single criminals, how can he prevent good citizens in hundreds of thousands from lynching those criminals if they catch them? Perhaps some of the purblind members of the police force may be among the first to be lynched.”