A

CALHOUN IS THE HERO OF THE CITY

LL this time the street car strike was going on, with almost daily violence and bloodshed, and Calhoun was riding up and down Market street, to the admiration of all who saw him. His ruthlessness in dealing with the strikers and his terrific efforts to quell the storm he had raised were having exactly the effect he had desired when he plotted to cause the strike. He was daily becoming more of a hero to the big men of San Francisco who controlled public opinion.

Meantime it became known to Ruef that Roy had come over to our side, and in order to frighten him into silence Ruef had introduced into the Board of Supervisors an ordinance making it illegal for any girl under eighteen years of age to visit a skating rink without her mother. If this became a law, Roy and Maestretti's business, Dreamland Rink, was doomed.

Roy, far from being intimidated, responded to this threat with a brilliant idea. He suggested to us that by means of this proposed ordinance we could trap the supervisors. His plan was to bribe them to kill the ordinance, have them caught taking the money, and terrorize them into confessing the overhead trolley briberies.

We rehearsed for the plan in Roy's office at Pavilion Rink. There was another room next to his office, in which we planned to hide and watch the bribery. Burns borrowed a gimlet from a nearby grocery store, and we bored three holes through the door, so that three people could look into Roy's office. When this was done, Burns and I stood on the other side of the door and looked through the holes, while Roy rehearsed the coming scene.

Roy sat at his table with imaginary bills in his hand, and the chairs placed in such a position that we could see him. Then, leaning toward the empty chair in which the unsuspecting supervisor was to be placed, Roy began, pretending that Supervisor Tom Lonergan was present.

"Tom, I want that skating rink bill killed. If it goes through "

We would interrupt. "A little louder, Roy-" "Move over to the right. Now go ahead."

"Tom, I want that skating rink bill killed. I'm willing to

pay $500 for it, and here's the money. The bill's coming up tonight, and I want you to go against it."

The rehearsal was perfect. It was beyond my imagination to conceive of anything like that being fulfilled, and I said to Roy, "It's too much of a melodrama for me. I can't believe it's possible that anything like this will ever happen." Roy replied, "Don't worry. It will happen exactly as we have planned it."

And it did.

Two days later Supervisor Tom Lonergan came into the office, while Burns and two other witnesses stood behind the door. He took the chair that had been placed in position, listened to Roy's talk pitched in a key that the witnesses could overhear, took the money and pocketed it. After him came two others, one at a time, I have forgotten which two they were. We were elated and were arranging to trap the others speedily, when the Chronicle got a tip that something was happening, and ran a story which scared them all.

So we worked on the three, and finding that we had the goods on them, they confessed to everything, including the overhead trolley deal. And their confessions involved the others, and the others got scared and got in line. The whole eighteen made their confessions as quickly as they possibly could, one after the other hurrying into safety, with the promise given them by Heney and Burns and Langdon that they would not be prosecuted if they testified.

We had in our hands all the evidence that I had been combing the town for, during many years.

Burns later got the whole credit for obtaining these confessions, but the trap which caught them was entirely Roy's idea, planned by Roy and carried through by Roy.

While these confessions were being taken down, Ruef had hidden himself away in a roadhouse at Trocadero. He was out on bail, under indictment in the French restaurant case. Burns was searching for him.

He finally found him, brought him back into custody, and put him in the Little St. Francis Hotel, a temporary structure put up after the fire in Union Square. Here Ruef learned for the first time of the supervisors' confessions, and Burns believed that he could be induced to make one himself. But Burns said that Heney was so exalted over his success with the supervisors that he would not listen to any confession from Ruef.

"Let the blankety-blank go over the bay! We won't allow him to confess and have immunity. We've given the eighteen supervisors immunity, and we'll make him sweat!"

Burns shook his head, and said to me, "That's the way it always is when you haven't got complete control. You see,

they don't know now that in less than two weeks they'll be pleading with me to get Ruef to do the very thing I could easily get him to do now, and that he won't think of doing when he gets his second wind and has a chance to connect up with his powerful friends. They'll order me to get his confession, in two weeks, remember. And it'll be hard to do."

Sure enough, in less than two weeks Burns was hard at work trying to get a confession from Ruef.

By connecting up with Rabbi Kaplan and Rabbi Nieto, he managed to secure a confession from Ruef on the overhead trolley bribery, on some understanding with Ruef that he was not to be prosecuted at all, not even in the French restaurant case, which was then pending. Burns told me little, almost nothing, about the details of his arrangement with Ruef. It was not until much later that I learned the facts. At that time I knew only that Burns was well along toward pulling Ruef through.

One day Burns came to me and asked me to go with him to Judge Lawlor and try to convince Lawlor that if Ruef was a good witness in all the big bribery cases he should be allowed to go free in the French restaurant case.

We found Lawlor in his room at the Family Club. Burns presented the case to him. Lawlor flatly refused to have anything to do with any such program. He said that the city would not stand for Ruef's not going to the penitentiary, that Ruef must be put in stripes. Anything less than that would mean the failure of the graft prosecution.

"We've already given immunity to eighteen supervisors," said Lawlor. "Now to give full immunity to Ruef would mean our ruin. This must be done: Let him be a witness in all the big bribery cases. Let the French restaurant case be pending the while, and then when he has made a good witness, let him come into court and plead guilty on the French restaurant case, let the district attorney state to the judge that Ruef has been a good witness for the state and ask leniency for him, and then the judge will let him off with a year.

"But one year at least he must serve in the penitentiary, to save our reputations."

I agreed with Lawlor, and Burns went away much disappointed. Later, there came the well known midnight meeting between the rabbis and Heney, and the obtaining of such concessions as the judges would make, sufficient, apparently, to satisfy Ruef.

Ruef then appeared before the grand jury, and gave the evidence necessary for the indictments of himself, Schmitz, John Martin, De Sabla, Frank Drum, and Patrick Calhoun, and some others, on the big bribery charges. That day the

foreman of the grand jury telephoned Cornelius, president of the carmen's union, and asked him to be very careful to prevent any disorder of the strikers. We knew from this that the grand jury was about to indict Calhoun.

After he was indicted, however, he crushed the strike. The men went back to work, the streetcars were running again, and Calhoun had become a great, public-spirited figure in men's eyes. He loomed as the savior of the city, once ruined by fire and threatened again by labor-unionism. His indictment made no dent at all upon his popularity. The prominent men of San Francisco stood before him and said: "Let's see you convict him!"

"But don't you want him convicted if he is guilty?" "NO!" one of them said. "If I were on the jury I'd vote to acquit him if he were guilty as hell! He's the man that saved San Francisco!"

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"KEEP AWAY FROM THE BEACH"

HEN the streetcar strike had successfully been engineered and broken, Bowling, the secretary-treasurer of the Carmen's Union, was placed on the payroll of the United Railroads. However, after Calhoun had been indicted, Bowling became dissatisfied with the amount of money he was getting. He must have felt that he had been unfairly treated by Calhoun, or, perhaps, he endeavored to get more than Calhoun was willing to pay. At any rate, he finally came to Burns and offered, for $10,000, to give us the evidence that Calhoun, Schmitz and he had planned and caused the streetcar strike.

Burns, being employed by the District Attorney, was not in a position to negotiate with him directly, and sent him to me. He sketched roughly this story of the making and breaking of the carmen's strike, and offered to put himself on record, to make an affidavit to it, for $10,000. Burns got him to finally agree to $6000. I consented to this, and arranged to meet him the following day.

Next day I met Mr. Bowling in an office in the Spreckels Building, with a stenographer. I had arranged for the $6000. Bowling had with him a man who had participated with him in the deal with Calhoun. The stenographer was ready, waiting. I said, "Go ahead. Everything is arranged. Tell your story."

He said, "Well, we met at Calhoun's house."

I said, "Go on. Who was present? Calhoun? Schmitz?" There was a long silence. He turned white. Finally he stammered that he couldn't go on.

"Why? Don't you want the money?"

"Yes," he said. Then he said, desperately, "But theythey'll kill me!" He meant the carmen he had betrayed.

I said, "All right. Good day." Bowling left the room. Burns bitterly reproached me for this action later. He said I should have coaxed him along, given him a little money, played him from day to day until he was ready to talk. But I was not experienced in such matters.

Next morning there appeared in one of the morning papers a story, backed by an affidavit by Bowling, charging me with attempting to bribe him with a sum of money to tell a lie against Calhoun. Then he proceeded to tell the story of the sack of money I had taken to union headquarters to sup