San Francisco graft trials
Among those implicated were Mayor Eugene Schmitz, political boss Abe Ruef, and various members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, all of whom had taken bribes from business owners.
Ruef was at the center of the corruption; while acting as Schmitz's attorney, he approved all city contracts and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payment from business owners, keeping a portion for himself and distributing the remainder to the Mayor and Supervisors.
This is evidenced by the refusal of Stephen T. Gage, one of the directors of the Southern Pacific Railway, and Richard Chute, a salaried employee of the same company, to obey a summons from the 1891 Wallace Grand Jury until compelled by the California State Supreme Court.
During the prior year, a union company was hired during another convention in San Francisco to handle the baggage, but many attendees did not receive their luggage until they were ready to leave town.
[8]: p288 A total of about 16,000 longshoremen, clerks, packers, and warehouse workers on both sides of San Francisco Bay joined the work stoppage, further increasing the tense situation.
He methodically sought out neighborhood associations, ethnic clubs, and other civic groups, supporting them with contributions and payments, and providing services like leniency from a local judge and quick approval of a business license.
[3] Eugene Schmitz played the violin, conducted the orchestra at the Columbia Theatre on Powell Street in San Francisco, and was president of the Musician's Union.
When a decision needed to be made, Ruef would meet with the Supervisors privately beforehand and even suggest statements they might make to give the appearance of independent action.
[10]: p38 They approached Francis Heney, who as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General's office, had just concluded a successful prosecution of corrupt government officials in the Oregon land fraud scandal.
... You show the same courage which put a bullet into the body of Dr. John C. Handy of Tucson, Ariz. in 1891, for whose killing you were indicted for murder, and upon trial were acquitted because you were the only witness to the deed.
"[10]: p43 By the time of the November, 1905 election, the United Railroad was embroiled in a bitter fight with Rudolph Spreckels and James Phelan who resisted overhead trolly lines along Sutter Street where they owned property.
[10]: p33 Ford, representing Calhoun and United Railroad, upped is monthly retainer to Ruef from $500 to $1000 (about $17,000 to $34,000 in 2025) after the 1905 election, and the two sides finally agreed on a deal that called for the company to pay for ornamental street poles and the electric lights along their trolley routes.
When Spreckels offered to pay for the cost of draining an underground conduit for a test period to prove it was feasible, Calhoun, President, and George P. Chapman, General Manager of the United Railroads, refused.
To bring further pressure on Calhoun, James Phelan, George Whittell, Rudolph Spreckels, his father Claus Spreckels, and Charles S. Wheeler filed papers on April 17, 1906, to incorporate the Municipal Street Railways of San Francisco, in order to prove that underground conduits were economical and superior, and to bring pressure to bear on Calhoun to give up his resistance to undergrounding the electrical lines.
[10]: p44 He wrote a letter saying that he would submit the matter "to the proper authorities of the city" was resented by the San Francisco Chronicle, who condemned it as breathing "the spirit of insolence" and containing "ill-concealed menace.
Four days later, crews from the United Railroad began stringing temporary overhead trolley wires on Market St., but did not repair the cable traction system in the street.
Ruef then attempted to fire Heney, writing him a curt note, "You are hereby removed from the position of Assistant District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco."
Heney filed a temporary restraining motion before Superior Court Judge Seawell to bar Ruef from acting as district attorney, who granted it at 5:00 a.m. the next morning.
[10]: p91 On October 28, Tirey Ford, the general counsel for United Railroads, told the San Francisco Examiner, "Of course there was no bribery nor offer to bribe, nor was there anything done except upon clean and legitimate lines.
[10]: p08 The grand jury heard testimony about "French Restaurants" in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco that supplied both food and "private supper bedrooms" for their patrons and prostitutes.
Then, on March 7, 1907, while Ruef was still in hiding, Detective Burns set up a sting and witnessed Supervisor Thomas Lonergan accept a bribe from Golden M. Roy, owner of a well-known cafe with interests in several other businesses, including a skating rink.
[13]: 254 But neither of the two men implicated Gallagher or Ruef, and the prosecution badly wanted information that would allow them to bring more charges against the two masterminds and the corporate executives who had supplied the money.
[10]: p155 On March 14, Tirey L. Ford told The San Francisco Call that the grand jury's graft investigation wasn't legal and he refused to testify.
[10]: p153 The prosecution's only hope to convict the executives of bribery was to prove a conspiracy, that they gave money to Ruef, a non-public official, with the intent that he pass it on to the Supervisors, who were.
The attorneys included Earl Rogers of Los Angeles, and Alexander King, Calhoun's partner in New York, who gained admittance to California Bar just for Ford's case.
[21]: p243 In presenting Calhoun and Tirey's defense, Rogers argued that the prosecution had failed to make a case against the defendants, and didn't call a single witness or introduce any evidence.
"[20] That night Haas was placed in a prison cell with a policeman to guard him, but despite these precautions was found dead with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead the following morning,[38] a derringer beside him.
In desperation, Heney ran for district attorney, but was defeated by a Union Labor loyalist, lawyer, and former football hero from Stanford University, Charles Fickert, whose liaison with the crooked politicians was well known.
William P. Lawlor, the honest judge who had presided in several of the cases, excoriated Fickert and ordered the others to trial, but he was overruled by the court of appeals, which decided that all of the large number of remaining indictments should be quashed.
He asked Ruef to write his memoirs, which were published in the San Francisco Bulletin in installments almost daily over months, finishing at the point where the graft investigation began.
