But in spite of all that is being done to create public opinion favorable to Ruef’s release, the sober expression of machine-free press and public is that Ruef should be treated both on the score of parole and confinement precisely the same as any other prisoner.[490] This attitude was clearly presented by the Fresno Republican at the time Ruef was found smuggling chocolate sweets into the prison.
In the attitude of prison officials toward Ruef, the Republican pointed out, there are two alternatives. “One,” the Republican went on to say, “is the course of Warden Hoyle, in treating Ruef like any other prisoner, and disciplining him humanely but sternly, for any infraction of the necessary prison rules. The other is to let Ruef have privileges which the other prisoners do not and can not have. News travels nowhere faster or surer than in prison. If Ruef bribes guards, the officials may not know it, but the prisoners will. If Ruef may have smuggled sweets, the other prisoner, whose every nerve-cell shrieks in agony for cocaine, but who knows he will be thrown in the dungeon if he smuggles it, will have no illusions about the smuggling privilege. If the very minions of justice do injustice, as between Abe Ruef and Convict No. 231,323, every man in that vast prison will be taught that he is the victim not of justice, but of force and favoritism. And if Ruef, at the expiration of a bare year, were to be paroled out, every other convict, whose very application can not be heard until he has served half his term, will know that he is suffering the penalty, not of his crime, but of his poverty and friendlessness. Shall Abe Ruef be suffered to teach that lesson? Shall he corrupt San Quentin prison as he did San Francisco? Or shall there be at last one place found where even Abe Ruef gets exact and equal justice?”
Ruef is getting equal justice at State prison, not because he corrupted San Francisco, not because a jury of twelve citizens found him guilty, not because seven out of eleven judges declared against him, but because the political machine, of which Ruef was one of the most powerful leaders, has been broken in California. Under the old order, to have kept Ruef jailed would have been impossible.
CHAPTER XXX.
Conclusion.
After the McCarthy-Fickert election there were rumors that the graft defense, flushed with its successes in the overthrow of the prosecution, would resort to reprisals, by singling out persons prominent in the movement to enforce the law, for trumped-up charges and possible indictment. But aside from an abortive attempt to make it appear that former Supervisor Gallagher had fled the State at the behest of William J. Burns, reprisals of this nature were not attempted.
The reprisals came in more subtle form. Members of the Oliver Grand Jury which had brought the indictments against Ruef and his associates, found themselves marked men in business, political and social circles. A member of the faculty of the State University who had been active in defending the cause of the prosecution, found his salary remaining practically stationary, while his associates received material advances. When the directorate of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Company was formed, financiers who had supported the prosecution found themselves barred from directorships. It may be said, however, that the graft defense was well represented, one of the Exposition directors at least, Thornwall Mullally, having been one of those indicted in the graft cases.
When the suggestion was made that James D. Phelan be made Pacific Coast representative in President Wilson’s cabinet, at once the graft defense pack was on his track, openly naming Mr. Phelan’s assistance to the prosecution cause as reason sufficient why he should not be given the cabinet appointment.[491]
On the other hand, all danger of confinement in State prison being gone, the graft defense, through its various newspapers, urged incessantly that the past be forgotten, that San Francisco interests get together for the good of San Francisco. But this “getting together” meant the banishing from political, social, and, as far as practical, business circles, all who had sided with the prosecution, thereby giving control of all activities to sympathizers with the graft defense.