honor. We were responsible for the environment in which Ruef found himself, we had set up the standard of success which he tried to reach.

We did not question the methods by which a man got money; we only demanded that he get it. Even now, we were not punishing Ruef so much for what he had done as for being found out. Other men, equally guilty, were walking abroad in the light of day, enjoying friends, success, popularity. We had not altered the conditions in the least; we had not changed our standards of value; we had not ceased to flatter and fawn upon the man who had got hold of money, no matter how he got it.

It came to me that Ruef, seeing these things, justified to himself the things he had done, just as I justified to myself the things that I had done. I had been fighting for a clean city, but my motives had not been all pure, civic devotion. I had not been unaware that I was making a big and conspicuous fight, that it was making me a big figure in men's eyes, and that if I won I would be something of a popular hero.

All these motives had mingled to give me one strong, burning desire-to win the fight. It had seemed to me that many questionable acts were justified if they would contribute toward that end. I knew Ruef and Ford and Calhoun and Schmitz were guilty; I wanted them convicted, and I had not greatly cared how it was done.

Now, thinking of Ruef, I believed I saw that he had felt the same way. No doubt many motives had entered into his desire for success. He had wanted to stand well in men's eyes, he had wanted to repay the affection of his people by making them proud of his achievements. He had come from college, a young man, to find San Francisco what it was, and he had made his place in it, doubtless justifying himself at every step.

When I thought of Ruef in this way, I felt a change in my attitude toward him. I thought of the years I had spent, doggedly pursuing him, with the one idea of putting him behind bars, and it seemed to me that I had been foolish and wrong. It came to me that I should not have directed my rage against one man, human like myself, but that I should have directed it against the forces that made him what he

was.

Those forces were not changed by our putting Ruef in San Quentin. Money was still the only standard of success, the only measure of power, and it still is; great corporations still continued to control an apathetic people; all the influences that had made Ruef were still busy at work making more Ruefs. We had done nothing but take one man from beneath those influences, leaving an empty place that another

man would immediately fill. We had done nothing but wholly wreck one man's life.

I began to feel that I should ask Ruef's pardon for the harm that I had done him.

At last one day I went across the bay to San Quentin to do this. It took all the philosophy I could summon to uphold me on the trip. It was a difficult thing, after three years of bitter enmity, to go to Ruef and tell him that I was sorry I had taken the stand I had taken.

The thing I had come to do grew harder every moment while I waited for Ruef to come into the visitors' room at San Quentin. The captain had sent a man to tell him that a visitor was waiting. At last Ruef came in. His eyes fell upon me, and went past me, looking for someone he thought wanted to see him.

I went over to him then and held out my hand. I told him that I had come to see many things differently, that I was sorry for much that I had done, and I asked him to forgive me. We talked for some time.

Later, when he had become convinced of my sincerity, he told me his own story of the breaking of the immunity

contract.

R

RUEF BREAKS DOWN

UEF'S own story of the making and breaking of the immunity contract was this:

He had known nothing of the confessions of the supervisors until after he was brought back from the Trocadero and lodged in the Little St. Francis Hotel. Then, the graft prosecution, feeling that it could not trust the sheriff as his custodian, Judge Dunne appointed an elisor, William J. Biggy, to take charge of him.

In order to keep him entirely away from his friends and associates a big residence was rented on Fillmore street, and Ruef was lodged there under the constant supervision of the elisor. No one was allowed to see him save by permission of the graft prosecution.

Here he was informed of the confessions of the eighteen supervisors. He was shown that he was doomed, that his only hope lay in appeasing us by confessing his own share in the briberies. Rabbi Nieto and Rabbi Kaplan were allowed to see him, and they pleaded with him to yield. However, he steadfastly refused to do so.

"At last one day they told me that my mother was very ill, seriously ill, that she was calling for me. They said I might go to see her. Rabbi Nieto came to accompany me, and I was taken home.

"When I entered the room my mother was lying in bed. She was pale and very much changed. My old father was standing beside her. She stretched out her arms, with tears pouring down her cheeks, and said, 'Oh, Abraham, Abraham!'

"The rabbi said, 'You see what you have done to your mother, and to your gray-haired father. It is because of what you have done that your mother lies here, as you see her now. Will you not try to spare them further shame and disgrace?'

"My mother said, 'Listen to our friend, my son. he tells you, for my sake.'

Do as

"Then for the first time I broke down. I wept, and I said that I would do anything they wanted me to do.

"After that Rabbi Nieto and Rabbi Kaplan saw Burns and Heney and Spreckels and made the arrangements. I was to be given immunity if I would tell the truth. So I told them everything. I felt bitter humiliation as I did it. knew that I was betraying my old associates. I was torn

between my loyalty to them and my love for my family. I felt that in confessing I was doing a worse thing than I had ever done before, but I did it.

"Then before the Ford trial, when the evidence was being arranged, I was told that I must testify that Ford had given me the money for the purpose of bribing the supervisors, that something had been said between us to that effect.

"This was not true. Nothing whatever was ever said as to the way in which the money was to be used. We spoke of it always as an attorney's fee. The understanding between us was never put into words. I assumed that Ford supposed that I was to use the money as bribes wherever it was needed to get the overhead trolley franchise; I knew that he did not pay me $200,000 in the belief that I would keep it all, myself, as my fee. But nothing was ever said that indicated this understanding.

"I was willing to go on the stand and tell the whole truth. But I would not go beyond the truth. I felt bitterly ashamed that I had gone so far as I had, and nothing would. persuade me to go further. I had betrayed my old associates badly enough, without swearing to falsehoods against them.

"I refused to testify that Ford had ever said anything in regard to bribing the supervisors, and for this reason the immunity agreement with me was broken, and I was sentenced to San Quentin for fourteen years."

This was Ruef's story, and I believed it absolutely. I began at once, through the Bulletin, to plead for mercy for Ruef. I wanted to tell this story fully and publicly, and base my demand for Ruef's parole on the ground of simple justice. But I was unable to do so.

Crothers was unwilling that the halo which rested upon us for our share in the graft prosecution should be disturbed. We had won considerable credit in the fight, we were looked upon as disinterested, ardent crusaders, incapable of any wrongdoing. With all his power as owner of the paper, Crothers refused to allow this impression to be disturbed. So I was obliged to make my appeal for Ruef on purely sentimental grounds.

My changed attitude on Ruef displeased all of my former associates in the graft prosecution. Suddenly for me to ask for mercy for Ruef caused them to say, and perhaps to believe, that I had in a measure renounced the fight that was so dear to them all.

This was Judge William P. Lawlor's attitude. Shortly after his last election to the superior bench he called to thank me for the help the Bulletin had given him in his campaign, and to say goodby. He was about to go East to visit his old home. During this interview the judge said with a good deal

of feeling that he was sorry I had been unfaithful to the graft prosecution.

I quite lost my temper at this remark. "I have not been unfaithful," I replied. "But now that I have cooled off, I can see and think more clearly. I don't like many things we did to convict these men. I approved of all of Burns' methods at the time, but upon reflection I can't help thinking that we sometimes turned just as sharp corners as the defendants and their detectives."

"Mr. Burns is an honest man," said Lawlor with considerable heat.

At this I lost control of myself. "You say he was honest? I know he was not," I declared. "You must remember Captain Helms, one of our witnesses in your court in the trial of Calhoun."

"Very well," Lawlor replied.

"You probably also know that Helms had been one of Calhoun's detectives doing his dirty work. After he finished his testimony, Burns came to me with Helms and wanted me to get $10,000 for him from Rudolph Spreckels. Burns then left me alone with Helms. I asked him if Burns had promised him $10,000 before he testified. Helms told me that he was living on a ranch in Humboldt county when Burns' men came to him and offered to pay his mortgage of $7500 and give him an additional $2500 if he would come to San Francisco and testify against Calhoun. This was the felonious bargain that Burns had made and which he turned over to me to carry out. I sent Helms away and later told Burns that if he had made such a promise he should fulfill it. I would have nothing to do with it."