Note 89 — Chapter V · Graft Prosecution Opens.

The San Francisco Call, in an editorial article, printed October 22, expressed the general sentiment in San Francisco. The Call said:

“San Francisco will welcome the undertaking by Mr. Francis J. Heney of the duty to search out and bring to justice the official boodlers and their brokers that afflict the body politic. Public opinion is unanimous in the belief that Supervisors have been bribed and that administrative functions such as those of the Board of Works and the Health Board have been peddled in secret market. Even the Board of Education is not exempted from suspicion.

“These convictions, prevailing in the public mind, call for verification or refutation. The sudden affluence of certain members of the Board of Supervisors, the current and generally credited reports that the United Railroads paid upward of $500,000 in bribes to grease the way of its overhead trolley franchise, the appearance of public officials in the guise of capitalists making large investments in skating rinks and other considerable enterprises—these and other lines of investigation demand the probe. If there has been no dishonesty in office the officials should be the first to insist on a thorough inquiry.

“If it is true, as we believe, that official boodling has been the practice, a systematic inquiry will surely uncover the crimes. It is impossible to commit such offenses where so many are concerned without leaving some trace that can be followed and run to earth. The crimes of the gaspipe thugs seemed for the moment hidden in impenetrable mystery, but patient search discovers the trail that leads to conviction. Criminals are rarely men of high intelligence. They betray themselves at one or other turn of their windings. We are convinced that some of our Supervisors and not a few of the executive officials appointed by Schmitz are in no degree superior in point of intelligence and moral sense to the gaspipe robbers.

“Mr. Heney’s record as a remorseless and indefatigable prosecutor of official rascals is known. He will have the assistance in his new work of Mr. William J. Burns, who did so much to bring to light the Oregon land frauds. Those crimes were surrounded and protected by fortifications of political influence that were deemed impregnable. When the inquiry was first undertaken nobody believed it would ever come to anything. It was a slow business, even as the mills of the gods grind slowly, but if fine the grist of the criminal courts of Oregon is large and satisfying.

“The people of San Francisco have been sorely tried. Fire and earthquake we cannot help, but the unhappy city has been made the prey of a set of conscienceless thieves who have done nothing since our great calamity beyond promoting schemes to fill their own pockets. Our streets, our sewers, our schools and our public buildings have been neglected, but the sale of permits and franchises, the working of real estate jobs and the market for privileges of every variety have been brisk and incessant. Officials have grown rich: Some of them are spending money like a drunken sailor. It is time for housecleaning and a day of reckoning. Heney and Burns will put the question: ‘Where did they get it?’”