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THE REGENERATORS
RUDOLPH SPRECKELS
The chief of the regenerators and financial backer of the
Graft Prosecution.
THE
REGENERATORS
A Study of the Graft Prosecution
of San Francisco
BY
THEODORE BONNET
ILLUSTRATED
San Francisco
PACIFIC PRINTING COMPANY
1911
Copyriglit, 1911, by
TIIEOIX^KF. BONNET.
T5
PREFACE ' / / /
I'o the Average Citizen:
Dear Sir: Peniiit me to offer yon this little
book if for no other pnrpose than to employ
yon as a pretext for the zvriting of a forezvord.
Thongh I do not agree zvith the zvriters of the
long ago that a book rightly comprehended is
bnt a peg on ivhich to hang a preface redolent
of the author's charming personality and pal-
pitant Zi'ith his life-blood, I feel that not akvays
should a man hazard himself between book
covers zcithout an explanation.
The events ivhich most deeply occupy the
minds of one generation are often those of ivhich
the next knows least. This thought occurred to
me some years ago. ivlieii as a result of laborious
research I made )nyself more or less familiar
with the career of the Jlgilance Committee of
i8§6. For many years it was supposed that the
Vigilantes of San Francisco were public benefac-
tors, whose motives were untainted, whose per-
formances entitled them to the veneration of
posterity. Latterly it has been found that this
judgment might be somewhat modified without
incurring the suspicion of injustice. Mindful of
the. tendency of events to become so clouded as
to make it difficult to trace the connection be-
tween causes and effects, I resolved to make this
book that I might preserve from immediate de-
iv THE REGENERATORS
cav some curious material, tchich, though it may
suggest uo patterns to imitate, at all events is not
ivithout examples to deter. The book is a study
of the Graft Prosecution of San Francisco, a sort
of moral autopsy on a corpse that has just given
its last kick.
I know that usually, dear average citisen, you
buy a book to be amused. I know that to you
a book means something to while away a tedious
hour, and so I have tried to adapt the book to
your taste and temperament ; that is, I have
moralised as little as possible, and I have strung
my essays together on a thread of general in-
terest, arranging the most vivid facts and divert-
ing incidents in zvhat I conceive to be a coherent
picture. But I have tried also not to lose sight
of my purpose, ivhich is to induce you to think.
You flatter yourself that your mind is keen,
practical, versatile, in full possession of life,
always steeped in affairs, always cognisant of
zvhat is going on in tlic world: but as a matter
of fact you are under a spell. Your thoughts
are formed for you zvithout your knozvledge ;
you meditate along lines laid down for you; even
your ozvn judgment is a matter of intellectual
process foreign to yourself. In short you are
the pliant tool of the press. It is your boast that
you don't believe zvhat you read in the nezvs-
papcrs. The truth is you don't believe anything
else. The tyrant nezvspaper has you in thrall.
Pretending to reflect your opinion in its editorial
PREFACE V
coliiiiuis, the of^iiiioii it reflects in titosc coluiiiiis
is the opinion which xou formed fro)n reading
disguised editorial matter fashioned for your
deception and injected into you through the
medium of the neivs columns. As a result of the
imposture practiced on you from day to day yon
liaz'e become incredulous of nothing but the
truth. You are like the toper who has so keen
a taste for raw spirits that good whisky nauseates
him._ Xow herein a thesis is employed as a
X'.'hetting-block to sharpen up your zvits, and yon
are expected to yield them to one who zconld
make you sceptical of your smug infallibility. I
hope to have your mind share the processes on
which I have been engaged, and if possible I
would have you accept my point of vieiv, that you
may see things as I have seen them, on a some-
what broader base of knowledge than you have
had hitherto. I would persuade you of the pos-
sibility of there being two sides to a story. This
peculiarity of stories is proverbial, but that any-
thing you have read in the newspapers and
accepted as though it were clothed with the
sanctity of holy writ, could be presented from
any viewpoint other than the one from ivhich
you observed it, is an idea that doubtless will
strike you as preposterous. It is of the ration-
ality of this idea that I would convince you; and
hence this series of essays, through which runs
a thread of narrative of an historical nature,
dealing with events i^^'hich are n.attcrs of per-
vi THE REGENERATORS
soiial recollection, and ivith facts that have been
authenticated. Presumably you have read of the
prosecution of grafters in San Francisco. Pre-
sumably you know of the crimes that zvere im-
puted to the higher-ups in the course of the
prosecution. It is my purpose to tell the other
side of tlie story, to conduct you through an
inquiry respecting the conduct of the men icho
consecrated their talents to the task of regenerat-
ing a city. Frankly I seek to direct your judg-
ment of men and events. So not betzvecn these
covers is to be found the pose of the disinter-
ested historian. "To be entirely just in our
estimate of other ages," says Froudc, "is not only
difficult — it is impossible." It is impossible be-
cause one's sympathies are swayed by one's tem-
perament, directed by one's instinctive prepos-
sessions. If, then, one cannot zvrite impartially
of other ages, how absurd to affect impartiality
in zvriting of one's ozvn age; especially in zi'rit-
ing of events that tried one's soul, of men that
provoked one's anger and resentment. Of such
events, of such men, have I zvritten in these
imperfect essays. And though time has assuaged
my feelings, it has not affected my beliefs, nor
has it zveakened my convictions.
As I look back on the turbulent days that are
gone I haz'c nothing but repentance for the per-
sonal bias, that most irrational of all human
conceits, to zvhich I yielded on seeing zvhat I re-
garded as private animosity masquerading as
PREFACE vii
p blic duty. Hoi^' greatly docs pariisaiishif^ con-
duce to self-deception! The partisan flatters
himself that he hates a man on principle when
if is only because the man is on the other side.
By the experience of the past J Jiave been chas-
tened and disciplined, and zvhile I icill not pre-
tend that I breathe the serene air of the temple
of zcisdoin far abo-c'c the rage of the zcarring
elements of human nafure^ I trust that I have pur-
sued my study i^'ith feelings free from resentment,
though alzvays eoiscious of the rights zvhich
criticism reserz'es to itself. I haz'c z^'ritten, I
trust, zvith no lack of reverence for the truth.
But so strange is truth that much of this book
Zk'HI read to you almost as an c.vperiment upon
your credulity. Knoz^'ing this I hasten to assure
you that zvhat is incredible may be not the less
true; that, indeed, zchat is most incredible is most
true.
Theodore Boxxi:r.
September it, igu.
CONTENTS
I'age
Prologue 1
Chapter I. Birth of the Regenerators 14
How the Prosecution was Organized, and the
Gradual Unfolding of Its Plans.
Chapter II. Men and Motives 32
A Study of the Leading Regenerators and of Their
Attitude Toward the Chief Grafter and Some of
the Higher-ups.
Chapter III. The Car Strikes 44
Because Union Men Demand and Are Denied Lower
Wages a City is Made to SufTer from Lawlessness
and Business Paralysis.
Chapter IV. Bizarre Justice 65
The Manipulation of Juries, Grand and Petty, a
Plague of Spies and the Employment of General
Warrants.
Chapter V. Grafters and Prosecutors 78
When Facts Don't Square with Theory Then Comes
Progressive Testimony Lender the Immunity Lash.
Chapter VI. Ruef Pleads Guilty and Why 101
Experience of the Former Boss in the Hands of the
Regenerators : He Bargains for Immunity, but Re-
fuses to Give the Right Kind of Testimony and is
Forsworn.
Chapter VII. The Schmitz Case 136
A Trial in Which the Law was Adapted to the Pur-
poses of the Regenerators Without Regard to' Ele-
mental Principles or the Constitutional Rights of the
Defendant.
Chapter VIII. The Dynamite Explosion 163
A Miracle by Which the Precious Life of a Great
Grafter was Spared, and Which Enabled the Re-
generators to Inflame Public Opinion.
X THE REGENERATORS
Page
Cliapter IX. The Shooting of Heney 184
An Infuriated Ex-Convict Revenges Himself on the
Virulent Prosecutor and Commits Suicide Just as
Detective Burns is About to Pursue a Clue.
Chapter X. The Biggy Mystery 208
Hounded by the Regenerators the Chief of Police
Comes to a Tragic End.
Chapter XI. The Conviction of Ruef 219
A Jury After Listening to Vague Threats from the
Prosecuting Attorney Renders a Verdict of Guilty.
Chapter XII. The Calhoun Trial 229
Followed by the Crushing Defeat of Heney at the
Polls and a Scattering of the Forces of Righteousness.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Fragments of the Cornelius Letters 57
The Car Strike 65
Judge Franl< H. Dunne 147
After the Miracle 169
Ruef Going To and From Court 225
Judge William P. Lawlor 235
THE REGENERATORS
PROLOGUE
Convulsed by earthquake, devastated by fire,
San Francisco next experienced what some per-
sons have pronounced a greater affliction — the
(iraft Prosecution. The scars of earthquake
and fire are no longer visible, the wounds in-
flicted by the passions of man are still raw.
San Francisco, nay, all California, is today ex-
|)iating a protracted moral debauch. Strange
history is in the making- in California.
All history we have been told is philosophy
teaching by example. This is true of current,
as well as of ancient, history ; of what is
happening in California today as well as of
what hapi^ened in England in the time of
Cromwell. The size of the stage upon which the
great dramas of history were enacted is a cir-
cumstance having not the slightest effect on the
value of the material supplied for philosophic
deduction. As much is to be learned from the
history of Florence or of the Dutch Republic as
from that of the great Roman Empire, for, after
all, the study of mankind ma}- be ])rofitaIi]\- ]n\v-
2 T[1K RI-:GRNERA'r()RS
^ued wherever "the feeble worm of the earth"
is to be found indulging" in his foUies.
Now on the whole there is much varied and
valuable food for reflection in the story of the
Graft Prosecution from the standpoint at which
it is here to be presented. And the study of it
may be pursued with advantage at this particular
time, since we are now entering tipon a new era
of political development : since we are being ad-
vised and persuaded that the people are so en-
lightened and so just that they are no longer in
need of the institutional checks and safeguards
designed and contrived by the Founders. It
will be seen that notwithstanding the spread of
"sweetness and light," the susceptibilities of
human nature are the same today as in the Stuart
period of English government, which is at once
that of the greatest glory and greatest shame
in liritish annals: a period in wdiich judicial
records were stained by the foulest crimes in
modern history. There are no pages in history
that fill us with so much disgust, so much horror,
as those that present the narratives of crimes
committed in the name of justice in times of
popular panic : as, for example, the crimes by
which Titus Oates achieved immortal infamy,
and the crimes that made the Galas tragedy
memorable in the annals of France. Gharacter-
ized by the same spirit of inhumanity, conclusive
of the same indifference to the principles of
justice, were the strange enormities that marked
PROLOGUE 3
the progress of pseudo-reg-eneration in San Fran-
cisco. It will be found, perhaps, that the lesson
which the Graft Prosecution affords is one of
personal interest to every individual in the United
States. For the political institutions of Cali-
fornia are much the same as the political in-
stitutions of every other State in the Union ; nor
are the people of California vastly dift'erent in
temperament from the people of other States.
If the people of the metropolis of California by
reason of all that has been written of them of late
have come to be regarded as peculiarly incor-
rigible, singularly insensible to their own interests,
this conception on examination may be found to
be somewhat inaccurate. While there was much
to reprehend in the conduct of the people of San
Francisco during the turbulent period following
the earthquake and fire, it was at all events char-
acteristic of human nature. An excited populace,
as we have seen, in all ages and countries, displays
the same aptitude for harsh and hazardous ex-
pedients, the same blindness to its own real
interests, the same liability to be duped by
Pharisaism masquerading as civic righteousness.
If the people of San Francisco are desei-ving of
censure it is not for the coldness which they
developed toward their regenerators but rather
for the duration of their enthusiasm. And con-
sidering all the circumstances it would be a very
harsh judge who would hold them blameworthy.
All that the people of San Francisco were able
4 THE REGENERATORS
to perceive was the obvious, and by that their
enthusiasm was justified. The obvious is all that
any populace was ever able to perceive. The
obvious in San Francisco was the wrongdoing
of certain officials and the rightdoing of the men
who volunteered to punish them. As is in-
variably the case the multitude were absorbed
in the project in hand and insensible of the
possibility of evil consequences. They could see
the proximate, but what lay dimly in the distance
was beyond their range of vision. It would
have been remarkable had it been otherwise.
Many men above the average in intelligence were
no better ofif than the multitude. Some very
bright magazine writers visited San Francisco
during the Graft Prosecution, journalists en-
gaged in supplying people with emotions, eager
for the right kind of material ; but they were
unable to stick their claws into reality. Callous
to the sublime interest of the story that lay ready
to hand, its perplexities they never sifted, but
accepted the reformers at the reformers' own
appraisement, and wrote about them from but
one standpoint. None of them ever thought
of viewing the struggle from the other angle ;
yet from that angle could have been seen what
was really interesting ; nay, what was really ro-
mantic. For in truth what is instructive is not
all that may be found in this story of medieval
passion, possessing as it does all the interest of
a fictitious narrative, and exhibiting so many
PROLOGUE 5
strange vicissitudes that it may indeed pass as a
romance. The crimes of the grafters and what is
obvious with reference to the prosecution of the
grafters afford nothing but material for the most
commonplace melodrama. The ineptitudes and
futile machinations of the men who prosecuted
the grafters, and their doings generally, are such
as to seem wholly divorced from reality and
therefore the story of them, the portraiture of the
strange, the odd, the incredible has something of
the flavor of romance.
Much like the experience of France after the
first revolution is that which California is now
having. For many years after her rivers of
blood had ceased to flow nothing happened in
France that was not directly a consequence of
her extraordinary political upheaval. Friend-
ships, hatreds, industrial combinations, the shifts
and expedients of politicians, experiments and
innovations — all derived their inspiration from
one capital fact which had completely changed
the condition of life and given new impulses to
every class of society. So it is today in Cali-
fornia, where the people of the metropolis in
a moment of frantic zeal for reform wandered
from the middle course of feasibility and com-
mon sense and assisted in the perversion of the
institutions of government. The whirligig of
time is bringing in its revenges in California.
6 THE REGENERATORS
Lasting- hatreds have survived the abortive work
of pseudo-regeneration, giving color and tone to
social affairs, industrial transactions and political
bargainings. Feeling on both sides is as embit-
tered as were the feelings of the people of Flor-
ence in the days of the Guelphs and the Ghib-
belines. This feud had its origin in the early
days of the reform crusade when the reformers,
headstrong and haughty, assumed that every-
body who disliked their methods was in sympathy
with dishonesty. They were intolerant of all
criticism. To dissent from their views was to
merit the blackest opprobrium. They swag-
gered and fumed, and called names, and behaved
very much as though they were sighing for
the days of the Inquisition. This bully ism was
a matter of policy. For notwithstanding their
extraordinary political power, spite of their
consciousness of the justness of their cause,
they seemed to feel the need of the un-
wavering approval of public sentiment. With all
the machinery of government in their hands they
were not satisfied. The weapon of public opinion
they wished to wield also. So the slightest adverse
criticism of their methods they bitterly resented.
They insisted that everybody who favored the
regular mode of procedure in criminal cases must
be regarded as an enemy of civic virtue. They
had branding irons for every critic who had the
audacity to assert the right of free speech, which,
to say the least, ought to have been considered
PROLOGUE 7
odd, as the man who heheves his conduct is right
is not intolerant of discussion ; he is confident that
the more it is discussed the more true it will be
found to be. But this was not the philosophy of
the regenerators. To silence criticism they or-
ganized a body which they called the League of
Justice, and intimated that summary punishment
might be inflicted on every unfriendly critic.
Meetings were held by this league at which hired
lawyers and clergymen of the type that cultivates
publicity uttered ominous warnings which served
to imply that lynch law might be deemed essential
to the welfare of the city. Also there was or-
ganized the Heney Woman's League composed
of venerable dames whose daily appearance in
court was intended to impress and awe the
juries, and whose manner reminded observers of
the knitters of the French Revolution.
In spite of these agencies to stifle criticism, in
time it became apparent that the community was
losing confidence in its patriots, who at length hit
upon a masterpiece of ingenuity for the stemming
of the tide : they decided to have themselves in-
vestigated and vindicated. This was like intro-
ducing a bit of comic relief to leaven the sober-
ness of the tragic drama, but nobody laughed.
For there was a reign of terror in San Francisco,
and in those parlous times a joke was a serious
matter. The opponents of the Graft Prosecution
perceiving that the regenerators were skilled in the
art of inventing jokes that were loaded, deemed it
8 THE REGENERATORS
advisable to resist appeals to their risibles. If
the patriots themselves laughed it was only in
their own exclusive society after the cautious
manner of the ancient augurs. So when Mayor
Taylor, one of the political products of the
prosecution, announced one day that he had ap-
pointed a committee of seven to investigate his
discoverers there was no perceptible increase in
the gaiety of the community. Not a murmur of
derision greeted the members of his whitewash
committee, though all but two were known to
be warm adherents of the Graft Prosecution.
The chairman was William Denman, a young
lawyer, whose father had been a political protege
of one of the millionaires behind the prosecu-
tion. Of the six men associated with him on
the committee, four were ardent partisans of
the ])rosecution. Not the least disinterested of
them was William Kent, a millionaire who had
contributed generously to the large fund formed
to defray the expense of civic redemption, and
who has since been elected to Congress, not by
virtue of the record he made as a regenerator but
rather by the potency of the bank account that
was in evidence during his campaign. Air. Kent
was a member of the League of Justice at the
time of his appointment to the whitewash com-
mittee. Also of this league was Father D. O.
Crowley, a Catholic priest, appointed to the com-
mittee, presumably to impart a tone of impartial-
ity. â– Father Crowley was on terms of social
PROLOGUE 9
intimacy with members of the reform cabal.
He was not less desirous of the vindication of
the regenerators than was his associate Mr. W.
J. French, editor of an ofificial organ of
organized labor. In time these men produced
a coat of whitewash, and nobody asked why it
was that the regenerators, if they were conscious
of their purity and eager for investigation, had
not invited examination at the hands of disin-
terested citizens.
Meanwhile factional strife raged with great
fury. The issue between the regenerators and
their critics vibrated in every heart and burned
on every tongue. Partisanship was iniiversal.
As time ran on and more apparent it became
that the means employed were considerably less
unimpeachable than the end professed, the town
came to be divided by a great gulf of passion
and ])rejudice. And still the slightest criticism
brought out flaming denunciation. The leading
and most virulent of the pro-prosecution organs
argued that the weekly papers should be suj)-
pressed. Members of the League of Justice
visited the editors of these ]Dapers to warn and
terrorize them in the hope of putting an end to
the freedom of discussion. By the pro-prose-
cution organs gall and spleen were poured on the
heads even of private citizens, whose only offense
was that of dissenting from views which the
cabal had pronounced orthodox. Spleen was
everywhere in evidence. Not since the days of
10 THE REGENERATORS
the fires of Smithfield did bigotry throw human
nature into stronger Hght and shade. The
feud spread over the whole State, and even now
it requires but a zephyr of opinion to fan the
smoldering fires into livid flame. In the metrop-
olis, the temperament of which is like the climate,
cloudless and serene, the masses have put the
past where it belongs. They are preoccupied
with preparations for the great fair in 1915 at
w^hich the opening of the Panama Canal is to
be celebrated, but in certain quarters at brief in-
tervals there is a recrudescence, and the old sore
runs again much to the annoyance of amiable
citizens whose expostulations are in vahi.
If nothing but this feud survived the Graft
Prosecution there would be much to deplore,
but there is something worse. As a con-
sequence of the extraordinary drama that was
played in the metropolis, demoralization per-
vades the politics of the whole State, and what
was once a sane, sober and conservative common-
wealth is now conspicuous for its hysteria, its
new fangled ideals, its populistic tendencies, and
its passion for all the catholicons prescribed by
the Cleons of the hour. California is reputed to
be suiTering from an acute attack of what has
come to be known as Progressiveness. The
truth is, the aftermath of the Graft Prosecution
is what the State is experiencing. What a dis-
tinguished Progressive Senator of the United
States aptly described as "reform run mad" in
PROLOGUE 11
California, is the result of the furious vindictive-
ness of the men who were thwarted in their
efforts to reform San Francisco by convulsion.
These men have most successfully played upon
the emotions and credulity of the people of the
whole State. And to this day the regenerators
have many defenders in California, it being against
human nature for men to surrender their impas-
sioned convictions, to admit that what they once
approved with fury in the midst of superheated
disputation was inconsistent with principles of
decency and honesty. Men who will admit there
was much they did not approve will be careful
to add that as the Graft Prosecution was con-
ducted for a righteous purpose it should have
had the sympathy of all good men and that good
men should palliate what evil was done. These
men, persuaded that the failure of the Graft
Prosecution was due to widespread corruption
in politics, supported the political machine of the