Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 2 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 7

Fresno was agitated to its depths in 1907-08 over a conscienceless effort made with apparent support of a ring in the legislature to divide the county by lopping off western territory embracing the Coalinga oil field developed in large part by Fresno men and capital and annexing it for the enlargement of Kings County to satisfy an insatiate greed.

Kings contained then 1,200 square miles. The Coalinga district embraced 1,242 square miles. It is one of the richest oil fields in the world. The proposed steal of the land south of the Fourth Standard Parallel would have more than doubled Kings' area. In the proposed change, Coalinga was sought to be voted by hook or crook from one of the richest to one of the poorest counties in the state: from one of the largest to one of the smallest.

Fresno ranked then sixth in the state in order of population and wealth. Its immediate future according to every reasonable prospect was to rise to fourth place. Beyond that it could not well advance. To do so, it would have to pass San Francisco, Los Angeles and Alameda. Kings was then not so large as the rich district upon which it had cast covetous eyes.

The ambition of Kings was to improve its river and swamp land at the expense of the taxes to be levied on the land and improvements of the oil district with which it was perhaps in closer relation because of the poor railroad connections and the lack of roads across the plains between Fresno and Coalinga. Indeed the railroad connection was by a circuitous route via Hanford in Kings. As a bribe to cajole it into annexation, the coveted territory was promised a supervisorship in the enlarged Kings County, besides other empty inducements, which with the ultimate defeat of the annexation project no attempt was ever made at fulfilment. Coalinga by going over into Kings was asked to forever cut off the chance for a big West Side county with itself as the largest community the possible county seat. A development had then been started and has since continued, and a population might be looked for to warrant someday the formation of a county with the oil district as the nucleus. Had Coalinga gone into Kings, the latter would never have population enough to suffer the territorial loss of Coalinga annex, and Coalinga, so the anti-annexationists argued, would have shut of? its opportunity for a big county north of the Kings River to satisfy the ambitions of a few politicians south of the river. It was after all is said and done a raw effort by Kings to grow by conquest.

This county division plan never had inception in Fresno but was conceived in Kings. Two years before the Hanford papers began the agitation and campaign to enlarge the territory of the vest-pocket county for the sake of the enlarged tax income, Kings having reached the limit at home and Coalinga being a convenient and contiguous field with possibility of exploitation and assuredly worth the effort. There was everything to win and nothing to lose. In April, 1906, the Coalinga Record, under another management than that which dictated its policy later, denounced the Hanford county division of Fresno project and the manifest effort to divide sentiment in the Coalinga district by fomenting dissension and declared that it was content to remain in Fresno. What induced the change in policy in the sheet is left to conjecture. Certain it was not in a change of conditions because they were improving. The annexation scheme was an inspiration of Kings for its material benefit, carried through its' first steps in the legislature by a combination of politicians and thereafter attempted to be pushed through to a successful consummation by methods suggestive of the most questionable tactics of the pothouse politician.

The annexationists were beaten in the end at their own game; the result on the division vote was attempted to be arbitrarily set aside and another election called; the popular indignation was great over the tactics pursued: the Fresno grand jury took up the matter of the election commission's refusal to perform an official duty in the canvass of the vote, and of the fraud in voting and registration; three of the commissioners were criminally indicted for felony; injunction was sued out to desist from holding a second or other election on division; the district appellate court issued writ commanding canvass of the election returns and declaration of the result; the indictments were afterward set aside on a legal technicality; the annexation swindle was defeated but based on the showing of the vote the Webber bill as a compromise was passed at the March, 1909, session of the legislature and 120 square miles were lopped of¥ from Fresno instead of the 185 asked and the Laguna de Tache grant was cut almost in two. The ramified litigation over the annexation steal created intense and bitter animosities. It was a rankling thorn for a decade after.

The legislative measure that initiated the division election was one by Assemblyman William L. McGuire of Kings who politically has passed into oblivion. Under that bill were appointed in March 25, 1907, the following named as commissioners to conduct an election to ratify the boundary change:

J. W. Herbert of Laton;

L. P. Guiberson of Coalinga:

Scott Blair of Coalinga;

D. M. De Long of Coalinga;

George Robinson of Coalinga.

They had made call for an election in the affected district for Tuesday the 10th of December, 1907. Things were in a muddled state the month before and registration of voters for that election had been reopened in the district under the expectation and theory that the election would not be held on the day set under the call and that the call was an illegal one. A test case had been taken to the supreme court against the advice of the Fresno bar and the decision declared that the election call could be issued at any tin.ie within sixty days after the remittitur of the court. The latter had not issued when the December 10th election date was set as notice had been filed of intention to ask for a rehearing of the case in the supreme court. The law required that the election proclamation be published twenty-five days before the day of election and under the attempted call for December 10 issued on November 13 there was a bare twenty-five days intervening and registration closing forty days before election. However that may all be, the election was held on December 10.

On the Saturday night before the election, the opponents of division held a rally at the Coalinga Theater which was literally jammed to the doors with the more than half a thousand people in attendance. The assemblage was an enthusiastic one and the sentiment decidedly in favor of Fresno and staying with it. Tom O'Donnell, one of the largest oil operators, who had at the election before been a candidate for the assembly, was the chairman and touched upon the personalities that had been injected into the campaign as uncalled for while not affecting the issues at stake. He declared that the attitude of many of the leading men of Coalinga had been misrepresented and lied about by the divisionists. He cited examples of misrepresentations, among others one by Assemblyman McGuire that the interests of the Associated Oil Company were being jeopardized by Guiberson as its local manager in efforts to coerce local men because he favored Fresno interests. The refutation was given in a letter by business men of Coalinga.

David S. Ewing defended Fresno's interests on the division question. The oil field had been developed by Fresno capital and operated by Fresno men. Kings County men came in after the field had been developed and been proven and there were no longer risks to take. He himself had been among the first to invest in West Side oil lands; was a member of the company that secured the first lease; and the company that discovered oil in 1899 on the West Side; and he was attorney for the men that discovered oil in the Coalinga field in 1894. He pointed out the loss to Coalinga in taking the division step and the burden that it would shoulder as it would be looked to to furnish much of the taxes for the building up of Kings County.

H. H. Welsh, another large oil operator interested in the pipe transportation lines, also pointed out the greater interests that Fresno men have in the district compared to the Kings agitators and therefore better able to form opinions on the subject of division than the outsiders. He referred to the change of policy of the Coalinga newspaper though two-thirds of its stockholders favored remaining with Fresno County and its unfair means and arguments. He asserted that the district supervisor had more than redeemed the one promise made that all money raised by taxation in the district should be devoted to improvements and needs of the oil district. He ridiculed some circulated rumors, one of these that if division carried the big oil companies would reduce men's wages because involving the supposition of a location in a county affected by the laws of supply and demand of the country at large. And as to the matter of roads of which much was made, he asserted that Coalinga had the best roads in the state and the winter before their condition was nothing to compare in badness with those of Fresno and in the vicinity of Hanford.

The speaker of the evening was Senator G. W. Cartwright of Fresno, who elaborated upon Kings County's ambition to grow by conquest, its greed and the fact that county division had its inception in Hanford. He made sport of the argument of the excess of love of Kings for the Coalinga people because Fresno officials had not visited the field as often as the Hanfordites. The sum total raised by Kings County for roads was $35,000, while the supervisorial district in which Coalinga is located alone raises $52,000. Kings County could not therefore fulfil the road promises it had made, giving it credit of wishing to make good on its word. The supervisors promise to spend district tax raised money in the district had been fulfilled and the spending of the money was placed in the hands of De Long. If not spent to the best advantage, then it was De Long's fault, or going back of that of the supervisor, but in any event the county should not be held to blame. The remedy is not to leave the county. Under the existing arrangement in Fresno, Coalinga received a lot of tax money, but under the Kings system the plan was to place Coalinga into a district to be included with a large part of the Tulare lake bottom. This swamp country has comparatively small taxable resources, the Coalinga district is rich and the oil field would be called upon to build roads and bridges for the lake and swamp district.

As to the bait promise of a supervisorship, the Senator said that nothing had prevented Coalinga having a supervisor in Fresno other than that no man had been enterprising enough and up to snuff to run for the office, yet the district had elected a county recorder and small precincts had sent many a county officer to Fresno. Some of the circulated lies that had been nailed, proven untrue and having no foundation were reviewed. Among these were the assertions that Fresno County does not own its courthouse property; that there is a clause in the deed for reversion if the land is not used for court house purposes; that the county is in debt; and the like. As an argument clincher there was exposure of the plot in the showing that on November 19, 1907, at Laton, Ben McGinnis had in the presence of ten people, some of whom had made affidavit, said with regard to the question of who would pay for the proposed improvement of river and swamp land in Kings County: "Those people over in Coalinga are not paying anything like the taxes they should and we are going to raise their taxes to pay for all those improvements."

As one of the big jokes of the campaign was the statement that a suburban line would be built in the event of county division to run from Coalinga to Hanford crossing the river twice and passing through Lemoore and Laton. This was passed off as buncombe, as an election and not an electric road and ridiculed was the thought that a county would expend $100,000 in bridges and in an electric road to accommodate the travel of a few hundred people.

The day may come when a main railroad will connect Fresno and Coalinga. Hanford located as it is will be always on a branch line and Coalinga annexed would be connected with its county seat by a jerk water line and the main line closely connected with Fresno. To emphasize the contrasted public improvements of Fresno and Kings Counties, stereopticon views were shown and the exhibition was of things that Fresno had, and that Kings lacked; and that Coalinga might expect to pay for what Kings lacked.

The night before election the divisionists had their final meeting. A Tulare senator and Hanfordites were the speakers, it was noted. The election was held with the following result, nine precincts in the affected district voting:

For division 643

Against division 521

Total vote 1,164

Necessary sixty percent, to carry 698

Division lost by 55

Coalinga precinct voted for 329

Coalinga precinct voted against 229

Total precinct vote 558

Necessary sixty percent 334

Division lost by 5

It rained on election day. Had it not rained, the anti-divisionists would have probably polled more votes. The rain impeded the automobiles as the swifter means of bringing men in from the oil fields to vote. Coalinga was the center of the day's conflict — a veritable "bloody angle" for there the Hanfordites were in strength and marshaled their forces, contested every inch of the ground with shifty tactics and methods to put to blush the boldest of metropolitan ward bosses. As Senator Cartwright stated after the thing was over, not dreaming of what was to come thereafter: "Every inch of the ground was contested, but Fresno did not lose any tricks, even though the cards did seem to be stacked at one stage of the game."

The first bomb cast into the camp of the anti-divisionists was a ruling early in the day by the election board that whoever had registered, even up to and including the day of election, could vote. This ruling was on the advice of a Visalia attorney, who represented the annexationists in all the legal proceedings. The ruling cast to the winds the general election law provision that a voter must be registered a certain number of days before the election day. The Fresno committee protested against the ruling but it was of no avail. So it decided to take the bull by the horns and it also went after anti-annexationists that had not registered within the forty-day limit. Such votes were offered but being anti-division voters their ballots were refused on the ground that their names were not on the register. Kings County men were permitted to vote on a certification by a deputy registration clerk, who by some well-directed mischance seemed to have omitted the names of those who might have been favorable to Fresno.

In the confusion that ensued the Visalia attorney was besieged and committed himself to a proposition on registration. The Fresno committee prepared certifications and forty-five or fifty votes were polled on the same basis as the Kings County "emergency voters." Registrations were also proceeded with but these were not voted or made avail of. As a matter of fact 270 names had been added to the great register since October 30, the day when registration for the election should have ceased. Challenges at the polls were in order all day long, a total of twenty-six from Fresno. It was also stated that for divisionists as well as the antis some 300 affidavits had been taken during November and December of persons whose names did not go on the register because the time was after the forty days before the election. These had been taken for possible registration on the first entertained theory that the election might not be held on the 10th as there was a question as 'to the legality of the election call issued before the remittitur from the supreme court came down in the first test case. Election day was a day of excitement wild and long to be remembered.

But if beaten at the election, there were other shifty tactics to be resorted to and they were on Tuesday, December 17, at Coalinga, when three of the commissioners actually declared the election held null and void and made announcement of another election to be held on the 14th of January, 1908. The commissioners were to have met to canvass the vote on Monday the 16th but did not. In a sworn affidavit made by Commissioners Guiberson and Herbert they deposed that they met at the appointed hour at the office of the commission with an attorney who was clerk of the commission in Coalinga to canvass the returns. The clerk locked the door, refused them entrance, or to have access to the returns, or to inspect them, whereupon the commissioners met outside the door and by resolution adjourned until two o'clock on the day after. The affidavit also stated that Scott Blair, another of the commissioners, was present in the building at the time and although requested to do so refused to meet with the two commissioners or to canvass the returns, the meeting having been at the call of the chairman theretofore given.

The reason for not holding the meeting became apparent at the proceedings on the day after. Evidently the program had not been completed the day before and had not been rehearsed. It was an excited meeting this assemblage of the full commission with enough legal talent on hand to back the hope of the chairman that it would put them right in the proceedings to follow. The returns of the Coalinga precinct were produced for canvass. The precinct register index was missing but as it did not show who had voted it was inconsequential. Its absence was seized upon by the chairman, De Long, to raise the point whether it was not for the commission to question anything done at the election outside of and not according to law, in other words to go behind the returns.

This was the cue for the Visalia attorney, who launched forth in an argument that the election was not conducted according to law and that it was for the commissioners to determine whether the returns had come to them in a manner provided by law, maintaining also that it had appeared that people had voted at the election that were not qualified to do so because they were not on the great register.

Reply was of course made by the attorneys representing the anti-divisionists and the question was squarely presented whether the duties of the commission were not purely ministerial in the canvassing of the votes cast and certifying the result, and not judicial as maintained by the divisionists in going behind the face of the returns and passing on whether ballots are legal or illegal for any reason.

The law giver for the divisionists went further to declare that there is no legal procedure to contest a special election such as this, and maintained that if any illegal votes had been cast it was the duty of the commission to declare the election null and void.

Commissioner Guiberson in Anglo-Saxon more forcible than elegant or parliamentary asked how the board was to determine this question?

Without attempting to answer this problem. Chairman De Long announced flat-footedly for an inquiry into the legality of the votes. The lawyers argued and argued but all in vain. A program had been resolved upon and it was the intention to carry that program over rough shod, if need be. Guiberson forced on the issue to proceed with the canvass. The vote was a tie, he and Herbert voting for the motion and De Long casting the deciding vote, making it; Ayes two; noes 3. Effort followed to take up the returns of another precinct but it proved a failure, for at this point advance prepared resolutions were introduced and of course adopted by a vote of three to two. If evidence were needed to prove the existence of a pre-arranged program, tile resolutions furnished it.

After this there was nothing more to do before the commission. The question was asked of the chairman: "Would this action have taken place had the election gone the other way?" The reply: 'It would in my case, so far as I am concerned," provoked incredulous smiles.

After long recitals, the resolutions declared that the election held on the 10th of December "was not in truth, or in fact, or in contemplation of law, such an election as provided for in said act;" all proceedings taken in relation to holding the election were voided and set aside and another election was ordered for January 14, 1908, and the secretary was ordered to demand of the county clerk a certificate showing the names of all qualified electors resident in the district prior to three months before the new date of election and registered.

It was a remarkable piece of work that of those three commissioners. As H. H. Welsh remarked: "This thing has positively reached the degree of indecency." As monstrous a lie as could be manufactured out of whole cloth was the declaration in the program resolutions that County Clerk W. O. Miles had refused "to furnish the board of commissioners any certificate under seal showing the additional names of the voters on the great register of the county of Fresno registered as residing in said territory described in said act, since the last register." He did furnish a copy of the great register and of all additional certified to names of voters on the register within forty days of the election and of those who had transferred within twenty-five days of the election. All who attempted to register after the forty or twenty-five days were not entitled to vote, and these he did not register nor certify to.

The county grand jury took up on December 20, 1907, the matter of the alleged conspiracy in relation to the division election and as the first phase the refusal of the three commissioners to perform a specific duty in the canvass of the returns, in pursuance of a conspiracy. It was a coincidence that Commissioner Herbert was a member of the grand jury and he was excused from participation in the inquiry on the first phase, but called for the second phase as regards the fraud in voting and registration. The plea for the refusal to canvass the vote was that this action was based on the advice of the Visalia attorney. The reason given for the non-holding of the called meeting of the commission for the canvassing of the returns was that it was not required to be held until six days after the receipt of the votes. That Monday was in fact the sixth day after the election and all returns had been received the day after the election.

There was a circumstance in this connection. It may have been that this Monday called meeting of the commission was not held because not until night of that day was the town council of Hanford to award to F. S. Granger franchise for an interurban road between Hanford and Fresno. Perhaps it was desired to have this matter settled before taking action to set aside the election and calling for another so that the matter of the franchise grant could be used as an argument for winning over votes at the second election. As a matter of fact this interurban road failed to materialize because its bonds could never find sale.

Confusion was worse confounded January 8, 1908, when there was a call out for the second election by the commission for the 14th but on which 8th day the grand jury returned indictments against Commissioners David M. De Long, Scott Blair and George Robinson for a felony under Section 41 of crimes against the elective franchise in the refusal and neglect to canvass the December election vote. The indictments were not expected so soon after the mandamus hearing at Sacramento the Monday before on the order to show cause before the district appellate court why they had not canvassed the vote. The petition was by John Cerini, an elector of the Liberty precinct, who had also petitioned in the Superior court of Fresno County to enjoin the holding of the January 14th election held up by order of Judge H. Z. Austin. The foreman of the grand jury was T. C. White and the indictments were returned by fifteen subscribing grand jurors out of nineteen.

There was a reason for advancing the finding of the indictments. The electors of Laton had voted strongly against division, in fact their vote had been a deciding factor, the divisionists having their support in the out-of-town voters in the Laguna country. To change the possible vote at the 14th of January election the commission removed the polling place from Laton, where it had been for years, to the district school house seven miles from town. The purpose of this change could have been to reduce the Laton vote against division because of inability to attend at the polling place, and thus increase the vote for division in the southern and western part of the county in the district before offset by the town people. Undeterred by indictment, mandamus and injunction, but determined to carry out the program to void the result of the December election, the personnel of the precinct boards of election in the affected district had also been changed for the election on the 14th, a new set of officials was practically named and anti-divisionists declared that the precincts were placed in control of sympathizers with Kings and partisans of division. The time for forbearance and temporizing had passed and the contempt of the commissioners was met by the indictments. Meanwhile no canvass of the vote and no official declaration of the result.

January 10th the appellate court issued its writ ordering the commissioners to canvass the result of the special election in December, the mandamus case having been referred to it for hearing and decision by the supreme court. The decision was an unanimous one and for the time killed the division movement. The pleaded refusal to canvass was on the ground that 309 voters registered within the forty days preceding the election were denied ballots by order of the county clerk.

The superior court injunction case as regards the called for second election on the 14th was independent of the mandamus case. It was held in abeyance until after the attitude of the refractory trio -was further made manifest after receipt of the mandamus order. The injunction forbade making any preparation for this election. The commission had no paraphernalia for it save the sealed and bank-vaulted election papers of December and if the returns were canvassed and the result against division declared manifestly there would be no need for another election under the act. The county clerk refused to issue new papers for an election in January. The question of illegal votes was not a matter for the commissioners as it had always been contended and as it was held. Theirs was to canvass the vote and declare the result. And if any one desired to contest the election, how was he to institute that contest when no official declaration of the December vote had ever been made? Moreover, had it come to the question of that fraud, it would probably have been found where the initiative was and there would have been no likelihood of a contest by the divisionists.

The mandamus decision was to order the refractory ones to do under the law the thing that they had been asked to do but which they stubbornly refused to do and for which they were indicted. Their defense was that they had acted as they did on the advice of a Visalia attorney. Lawyers will tell you that it is no defense in law that a client has acted on the bad or fool advice of a lawyer. The commissioners abided by the mandamus order and canvassed the December vote. They had been hoisted by their own petard. They had chosen to accept the sole and unsupported advice of this Visalian as against that of other lawyers and that of the county's law giver in the deputy district attorney in opposition to the Visalian but conformably with the court ruling in the mandamus case.

But there was discovered another strong piece of evidence as showing intent. It was brought to the attention of the grand jury, and as report had it, was a strong determining factor resulting in the presentation of the indictments. It was in effect that after the day of the December election and after defeat of division was known from the unofficial returns, and before the day for the canvass at Coalinga, the commissioners under indictment afterward communicated by telephone with county division headquarters at Hanford and all or some attended a meeting of the division campaigners in that town. The communications that passed and the instructions from the meeting were in effect of the character of the acts done in the refusal to canvass the returns, and brought about the complications that actually arose.

The four indictments against the three refractories and their ill advising Visalia attorney were stricken from the court files by a decision on January 23, 1908, by Judge J. A. Melvin of Alameda County, who had been called into the case and whose technical decision was that the substantial rights of the defendants had been violated in that G. P. Beveridge and William Forsyth as grand jurors had voted to find indictments when they had not been present at the grand jury meetings when testimony was given on the 20th and 21st of December and that what evidence they were in possession of was not legal but hearsay evidence, having been the stenographic report of the testimony given on the two days. Judge Melvin declared that he was loath to grant the motion on a technicality, but said that the people's rights would not be sacrificed by a granting of the motion for he instructed the district attorney to resubmit the case to another grand jury. The attention of the court was directed to the fact that even with the two grand jurors eliminated, there had still been a quorum of twelve to find the indictments. The answer was that the duties of a grand juror are not alone to vote but to hear and take the best evidence and to discuss it and not having heard all the testimony presented they were disqualified, biased or prejudiced.

The two jurors had testified that they were not prejudiced. In behalf of Beveridge, it was admitted that he had contributed $200 to the Fresno anti-division campaign fund. Three interesting facts were brought out in a reading of the testimony given by Commissioner Guiberson before the grand jury and they were:

(1) That it was understood at the meeting of the commissioners for the canvass of the votes that the Visalia attorney came with a prepared resolution to declare the election void and of no effect, with only the date line blank.

(2) That Guiberson could not comprehend that this Visalian's advice could be right because he quoted no law and had he said that black was white the board would also so have declared in following any advice from him.

(3) If any lawyer in Fresno had advised contrarily, the board would notwithstanding have acted upon the Visalia advice.

The conspiracy matter was never submitted to another grand jury. Division was effectually squelched. Kings County's land grab took another form and on March 10, 1908. Senators Cartwright of Fresno and Miller of Tulare arrived at a compromise and the Webber bill was passed after two roll calls on defeated amendments and with no reasons given for the passage of the measure. The bill established a new south boundary for Fresno County, the original bill asking for 185 square miles and the last amendment calling for 120. Miller had tied up a bunch of votes with a fairly close prospect on the final result: Cartwright recognized that he had been beaten and Miller was not certain how long he could hold his block intact. In the contest on the floor, Cartwright first proposed the river as a boundary giving Kings thirty-eight and Fresno in return thirteen square miles. This was defeated by a vote of seven to twenty-six. Then came his proposal to give Kings the district in Fresno south of the river; defeated by a viva voce vote. Then was made the offer to give the south of the river land and that about Heinlein understood to have a pro-Kings County population. This was defeated fifteen to eighteen.

In the debate on the floor on the third reading of the bill with demand of roll call, much was told of the history of the county boundary question in the effort of Kings to secure more taxable property, showing how the campaign was started in Hanford to arouse discontent, carried on for two years to set up a revolt against Fresno and ending in a vote and defeat of the proposition. Cartwright and Miller had made agreement against any lobbying on the bill in the hope of a vote on its merits. On the showing made at the election, it was claimed that the people north of the river were averse to going into Kings but those south of it desired a change.

Cartwright presented protest from about seventy-five percent, of voters in districts north of the river against any change; showed that ninety percent, of the people of Laton did not want to go into the smaller county and nearly all the families in Riverbend desired to be in Fresno. Miller's reply was almost wholly an attack on Assemblyman A. M. Drew of Fresno for instituting the injunction suit of two years before and lost to prevent the election, denouncing the act as a breach of faith in a matter submitted by the legislature. Interviews with senators on the Webber bill were excused on the plea that two years before Cartwright had beaten Miller in pledging senators on the boundary question. The further plea was that as above sixty per cent, in the territory asked by Kings so voted the change should affect the land on both sides of the river. Kings could not afford to accept the river as a boundary as it would have to spend too much money in bridges without recompense in taxable property.

Objection being made to the reading of more telegrams from Fresno against a change in boundary, Cartwright had his last fling in the arguments on the amendments to show up Charles King for his welching after making a $1,500 wager on division and losing. Cartwright admitted that this had nothing to do with the bill but he wanted to show the senate what kind of a man was behind the bill.

As passed, the bill gave Kings about half the valuable territory that it had asked for, leaving to Fresno the town of Laton and placing the line about six miles south of the fourth parallel line south which was the line that Kings desired. Fresno saved three-fourths of those that desired to remain with Fresno and lost nine-tenths of those that wanted to go to Kings.

And thus ended the chapter on the Kings County grab, denominating the attempted act of brigandage by the mildest of terms.