Читать книгу "The System," As Uncovered by the San Francisco Graft Prosecution - Franklin Hichborn - Страница 17

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The resignation of Supervisor Duffey to take charge of the municipal department of public works, and of Supervisor Wilson[167] to take the office of State Railroad Commissioner, left sixteen members of the elected Schmitz-Ruef Board of Supervisors at the time of the exposures of the graft prosecution. The sixteen, after the surrender at their last secret caucus, made full confession of their participation in the gains of the organized betrayal of the city.

Supervisor Wilson added his confession to the sixteen. Thus, of the eighteen Union Labor party Supervisors elected in 1905, four years after the organization of that party, seventeen[168] confessed to taking money from large combinations of capital, the very interests which the party had been brought into being to oppose. The public service corporations, confronting a party organized primarily to control municipal government to the end that equitable conditions in San Francisco might be guaranteed those who labor, by the simple process of support before election and bribery after election, secured as strong a hold upon the community as their most complete success at the polls could have given.

These large interests, approaching the new order with bribe-money, found politicians operating in the name of organized labor, ostensibly to promote the best interests of labor, to be not at all formidable. And when the exposure came, and the bribe-giving corporation magnates were placed on their defense, their most potent allies in the campaign which they carried on to keep out of the penitentiary, were found in the entrenched leaders of the Union-Labor party.

The Supervisors’ confessions corroborated the statements previously made by Lonergan, Walsh and Boxton.

The bribery transactions to which the seventeen Supervisors confessed, came naturally under two heads:

The first class included the briberies carried on through Ruef, who dealt directly with those who furnished the bribe money. Ruef employed Gallagher as agent to deal with the Supervisors. Thus Gallagher did not come in contact with those who furnished the money, while the Supervisors were removed still further from connection with them. Ruef, on his part, in passing the money, did not come into immediate contact with the Supervisors except in Gallagher’s case. It was bribery reduced to a fine art. In this group of transactions were included the bribery of the Supervisors to grant to the United Railroads its trolley permit; to the Home Telephone Company, its franchise; to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, an 85-cent gas rate; to the prize fight combine, monopoly of the pugilistic contests in San Francisco. In this class, too, is properly included the Parkside Transit Company, which had, at the time the exposure came, paid Ruef $15,000 to secure a street railroad franchise, with a promise of $15,000 more when the franchise had been actually granted. The Supervisors received nothing in this transaction, but they had been told by Ruef’s agent, Gallagher, there would be, first $750 each for them in the Parkside matter. Later on they were told the sum would be $1000 each.

The second class of bribes included those which were paid directly to the Supervisors. They included the bribes paid by T. V. Halsey, agent of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company to a majority of the Supervisors to prevent their awarding the Home Telephone Company its franchise. Gallagher did not participate in these bribery transactions, and could only indirectly throw light upon them. But in the other cases Gallagher was the pivotal witness. He received the bribe money from Ruef, and, after taking out his share, he paid the balance to the other Supervisors.

With a wealth of detail, Gallagher told how he had received the money, when and where, and went into the particulars of its distribution among his associates. He had received from Ruef in all, $169,350.[169] Of this, he had retained $27,275 for himself; the balance, $142,075, he had divided among his associates on the board.

This enormous corruption fund which Gallagher divided with the Supervisors had come from four sources. The so-called prize-fight trust had furnished $9,000 of it; the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, $13,350; the Home Telephone Company, $62,000, and the United Railroads, $85,000.

The first money that passed from Ruef to Gallagher and from Gallagher on to the Supervisors, the confessions showed, was for the prize-fight monopoly. This particular bribery seems to have been intended as a trying-out of the several members to ascertain which of them would take money in connection with the discharge of their duties as Supervisors.

Every member of the board accepted the package of bills which Gallagher tendered him. Indeed, several of them displayed surprising alertness to secure all that was their due. Ruef, it became known among them, had given Gallagher $9000, which evenly divided, meant $500 for each of the eighteen Supervisors. But Gallagher gave them only $475 each. An explanation was demanded of him. He stated that he had taken out 5 per cent. as his commission.

So strong was the dissatisfaction created by the holding out of this 5 per cent. that Ruef arranged to pay Gallagher a larger amount than the others received to compensate him, no doubt, for his extra services as bribe-carrier.

The new arrangement for the compensation of Gallagher was followed when the Supervisors were paid after fixing gas rates at 85 cents per thousand cubic feet, instead of 75 cents,[170] the sum pledged in their party platform.

One of the Supervisors, McGushin, refused to break his platform pledge, and held out for the 75-cent rate. In distributing the gas money, Gallagher paid nothing to McGushin.[171]

But to each of the remaining sixteen Supervisors, Gallagher confessed to giving $750. Following the new rule that he was to have extra compensation, Gallagher kept for himself $1350.

At the time of the gas-rate bribery, Supervisor Rea was making it unpleasant for his associates. Mr. Rea had accepted $475 prize-fight money from Gallagher, without, he testified before the Grand Jury, knowing what it was for. A few days later he told Schmitz of the matter. Schmitz contended that no such work was going on. Rea, when he received his $750 in the gas-rate case, went to Schmitz with a statement that money was used to have the gas rate fixed at 85 cents. Rea asked Schmitz what he was to do with the money. He testified before the Grand Jury that Schmitz replied: “You keep quiet. I will let you know.”

That was the last Rea heard from Schmitz on the subject. Rea testified before the Grand Jury that he still had the money Gallagher had paid him in the prize-fight and gas-rate cases.

Rea’s trip to Schmitz seems to have kept him out of the division of the Telephone and the United Railroads money.

The Telephone bribery was somewhat complicated by the fact that rival companies were in the field bidding for Supervisorial favor. It developed that eleven of the Supervisors[172] had accepted from T. V. Halsey, representing the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, bribes to block the granting of a franchise to the Home Telephone Company. On the other hand, the Home Telephone Company had paid Ruef $125,000[173] to be used in getting favorable action on its application for a franchise. Ruef gave Gallagher $62,000 for the Supervisors. Ruef states that he divided the remainder with Schmitz. In this way, the administration was bribed to grant the Home Telephone franchise, while eleven[174] of the Supervisors, a majority of the board, were bribed not to grant it.

The complications which this created almost disrupted the Ruef-Schmitz combine. The difficulty was threshed out in a Sunday night caucus. Those who had received money from the Pacific States people, with Supervisor Boxton at their head, insisted that the Home franchise should not be granted. On the other hand, Ruef and Schmitz, with the thousands of the Home Company in view, insisted that it should be. Both Ruef and Schmitz warned the Supervisors that they were perhaps at the dividing of the ways.

“Well,” replied Boxton significantly, “if men cannot get a thing through one way they might try and get it through in another.”

Mayor Schmitz demanded of Boxton what he meant by that. “Well,” Boxton replied vaguely but defiantly, “you know there are other ways of reaching the matter.”[175]

But Boxton was unable to prevail against the support which Ruef and Schmitz were giving the Home Telephone Company. Although eleven of the Supervisors had taken money from the Pacific States Company to oppose the granting of a franchise to the rival Home Telephone Company, all but four of those present at the caucus decided to stand by Ruef and Schmitz, and voted in caucus to grant the Home Company its franchise.[176]

The next day, in open board meeting, with Boxton still leading the opposition, the franchise was awarded to the Home Telephone Company.

The division of the money received from the Home Telephone Company people was one of the hardest problems in bribe distribution which Ruef and Gallagher were called upon to face.

The first plan was to pay the Supervisors who had at the last supported the Home Telephone franchise, $3500. At once those Supervisors who had, from the beginning remained faithful to the administration’s support of the Home Company and had refused to accept money from Halsey, pointed out that they would receive $3500 only, while the Supervisors whom Halsey had bribed would get in all $8500; that is to say, $3500 from Gallagher for voting to grant the franchise and $5000 from Halsey not to grant it. It was, those who had remained true contended, inequitable that Supervisors who had been faithful to Ruef and Schmitz from the beginning should receive only $3500; while those who had been temporarily bought away from the administration received $8500.

The “justness” of this contention appealed to all. A compromise was finally arranged, under which those who had stood out to the end against granting the Home franchise, should receive no part of the Home Telephone bribe money; those who had received $5000 from Halsey but finally voted for the Home franchise, were to return $2500 of the $5000 to Halsey, and receive $3500 from Gallagher, making the total of the telephone bribe money for each $6000; those who had received nothing from Halsey were each to be allowed $6000 of the Home Telephone money. In this way each Supervisor who had voted for the Home franchise would get $6000 for his vote. In the case of four of the Supervisors the entire $6000 came from the Home Company. Gallagher, too, was one of this class, all his compensation being Home Telephone money. But Gallagher received $10,000. Eight of the Supervisors had received money from Halsey, and yet voted to give the Home Company its franchise. These received $3500 Home Company money from Gallagher and were allowed to keep $2500 of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company money that Halsey had given them. Thus the Pacific States was forced to pay the Supervisors part of the bribe money they received for granting its rival a franchise. Incidentally, some of the Supervisors did not return half the $5000 to Halsey. But this is a phase of the ethics of bribery upon which it is unnecessary to touch.

Ruef regarded this unique discipline of the Pacific States as just punishment for its offense of trying to buy his Supervisors away from him.[177]

Following the telephone bribery, came that of the United Railroads to secure the much-opposed over-head trolley permit. On account of this permit, Gallagher testified, Ruef had given him $85,000 to be distributed among the Supervisors.

Of this $85,000, Gallagher kept $15,000 for himself, gave Wilson $10,000,[178] and to each of the other Supervisors with the exception of Rea,[179] $4000.

Gallagher’s testimony relative to the offer of a bribe in the matter of the Parkside Realty Company franchise was quite as explicit. He swore that Ruef had stated to him there ought to be $750 for each Supervisor in this. Later on, with a change in the proposed route,[180] Ruef had told Gallagher that the amount would be $1000 to each Supervisor. Gallagher had conveyed this information to the Supervisors. At the time of Ruef’s flight, arrest and the attending breaking up of his organization, the Supervisors were impatiently waiting for this money to be paid.[181]

One by one, sixteen of Gallagher’s associates went before the District Attorney and made full confession. In every detail they bore out Gallagher’s statements. When they had done, the District Attorney had statements from seventeen[182] of the eighteen Supervisors, that they had received large sums of bribe money to influence their votes in matters in which public service corporations were concerned; he knew the purposes for which the bribe money had been paid; he had a statement from Gallagher, corroborated at many points by the testimony of the other Supervisors, that the money had been furnished by Ruef. Ruef’s testimony would bring the bribery transactions directly to the doors of those who had bribed. This testimony could have been had, had the prosecution agreed to give Ruef complete immunity.

Ruef was a prisoner in charge of an elisor. He knew that the Supervisors had confessed. In an agony of indecision he sent for Gallagher and Wilson to learn from them all that had occurred.[183] They told him that full statements had been made to the District Attorney. Ruef complained that Gallagher should have tried to get into touch with him before making statements. To which Gallagher replied that such a course would have been impossible.[184] Both Gallagher and Wilson advised Ruef to make terms with the District Attorney. Ruef replied that he would think it over. Little came of the conference. The statements of the two Supervisors, however, must have shown Ruef how thorough the undoing of his organization had been, and how hopeless was his own case. But Ruef, sparring for time, and pleading for complete immunity, did not make immediate confession and, as a matter of fact has not, up to the present writing, told the full story of his connection with the public service corporations.[185]

After the confessions of the Supervisors, the District Attorney left Ruef to himself and hastened the Supervisors before the Grand Jury, where they repeated their miserable stories.[186]

And then the Grand Jury took up the task of tracing the bribe money from those who had received it, to those who had paid it.