After Ruef’s capture of the Union Square meeting, Rev. P. C. Macfarlane, pastor of the First Christian Church at Alameda, said in a sermon (October 21, 1906) of the San Francisco situation:
“Let a few resolute, clean-handed business men of San Francisco who are not cowards, who are not quitters or grafters, get together and make a purse of twenty, fifty or a hundred thousand dollars, then employ the ablest attorney to be had and set quietly to work to find the graft and punish the grafters. They could make chapel exercises on Sunday afternoon in San Quentin look like a political rally in San Francisco inside of two years.
“Thus Eugene E. Schmitz stands before the world as a man who tried to reform and could not. He is a moral inebriate. He is a welcher. He is a wanderer on the face of the globe, a man without country, expatriated by his own cowardice. This is Dr. Jekyll.
“But there are some who see in Schmitz Mr. Hyde. These do not give the Mayor credit for even a spasm of virtue and say that the great work of the morning of April 18 was done by General Funston and prominent citizens of their own volition. These people say that he has now gone from San Francisco, taking with him vast sums of money gained through the granting of the trolley franchise, plotted even while the embers smoldered, and that he will never return.
“The United Railroads is universally believed to have acquired its trolley franchises by corrupt means. It is said that prominent merchants will crane and crook and bow and scrape to get a nod of recognition from Abe Ruef. Ruef has used the advantages given him by the state of affairs to corrupt the greatest city in California. Ruef owns the Board of Supervisors. The Police Commissioners belong to him. The saloon-keeper who wants a license, a corporation that wants a favor from the Board of Supervisors, has only to retain Ruef as an attorney at a fee sufficiently large.”
Dr. Macfarlane gave expression to what many thoughtful men were thinking, but of which few with interests at San Francisco dared to admit openly.
Mr. Langdon’s statement was published October 21, 1906. It was in full as follows:
“In view of the present extraordinary conditions prevalent in the City and County of San Francisco, the unusual increase in crime, which threatens to grow worse as the winter sets in, and in view of the numerous charges of official graft and malfeasance in office, I have determined to seize the opportunity presented, by the impanelment of a new grand jury, which has been set down for next Wednesday by Hon. Thomas F. Graham, the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court in the City and County of San Francisco, to inaugurate a systematic and thorough investigation into these conditions. It is my official duty to do so, and in pursuance of that duty and in view of the magnitude of the task, I have decided to seek the best assistance obtainable. It is my purpose to set at rest these charges of official graft by either proving them false or convicting those who are guilty. If the charges be untrue, their falsity should be demonstrated to the world, so as to remove the impressions which have been circulated to the injury of the credit and fair name of the city. If they be true we should show to the country that there is enough strength, virtue and civic pride in our people to enable the regularly constituted machinery of justice to re-establish conditions on a clean, righteous and just basis, without resort to any extraordinary expedients outside the law. This is to be an honest, fair, thorough and searching investigation. We shall protect no man. We shall persecute no man, but we shall prosecute every man who is guilty, regardless of position or standing in the city. In order that we may have the benefit of expert services in this work I have requested Mr. Francis J. Heney, who has won national fame for his work in the prosecution of the Oregon land fraud cases, to become a regular deputy in my office. Mr. Heney has accepted. It is unfortunate that this work should be commenced during a political campaign, but the conditions in San Francisco to-day require that radical action be taken at once, and though I may be charged with instituting this investigation at this particular juncture for political advantage, I must ask the public to judge me by the results attained, which will be the best answer.