Supervisor Wilson had not misjudged the interpretation that would be placed upon Langdon’s suspension. The Call the following morning denounced Ruef as “District Attorney by usurpation; a prosecuting officer to save himself from prosecution.” The Chronicle set forth, in a biting editorial article, that “as long as they (the Ruef-Schmitz combine) felt safe from prosecution, they jauntily declared that they would like to see the accusations fully justified, but the instant they began to realize the possibility of being sent to San Quentin, they turned tail and resorted to a trick which every man in the community with gumption enough to form a judgment in such matters will recognize as a confession of guilt.”
The Examiner called the removal of Langdon and the appointment of Ruef, “the last stand of criminals hunted and driven to bay.”
“They have,” said the Examiner, “come to a point where they will stop at nothing.... William H. Langdon, the fearless District Attorney, and Francis J. Heney, the great prosecutor, have driven the bribe-seekers and the bribe-takers to a condition of political madness. In hysterical fear they last night attempted their anarchistic method of defense.”
The Bulletin devoted its entire editorial page to Ruef’s new move, heading the article, “Ruef’s Illegal Action is Confession of Guilt.”
“Nothing,” said the Bulletin, “in the history of anarchy parallels in cool, deliberate usurpation of authority this latest exhibition of lawlessness in San Francisco.... Government is seized to overthrow government. Authority is exercised in defiance of authority. The office of the District Attorney is seized deliberately, with malice aforethought, with strategy and cunning and used as a fort for thieves to battle down the forces of citizenship. The criminals, accused of felony, after inviting investigation and pretending to assist, have shown their hypocrisy by committing an act of anarchy which, while it might be tolerated for the time being in San Francisco, would result in the execution of these men in any government of Europe.”
Gallagher’s action, while upheld by the Union-Labor party leaders, and by the unions which these leaders dominated, was condemned by independent labor organizations.
The Building Trades Council, with which all the building trades unions were affiliated, dominated by P. H. McCarthy, promptly endorsed Gallagher’s action in removing Langdon. But many of the affiliated unions not only withheld endorsement, but some of them repudiated the action of the central body.
The Bricklayers and Masons’ Union, for example, with 800 members present, and without a dissenting vote, adopted resolutions declaring that “the President and Secretary[99] of the Building Trades Council are not fit persons to be at the head of the Union movement in San Francisco,” and denouncing the course of the municipal administration, which the Building Trades Council had approved, as “high-handed defiance of the law.”[100]
In spite of this repudiation by the unions, Ruef issued a statement in which he denounced the prosecution as a movement “to destroy the Union Labor organization and to control the situation in San Francisco in the interest of those who are opposed to the success of the wage-earning classes.” He announced further, “I have accepted this office, the first political position I ever held in my life, because I believe it to be my duty to the public to bring to an end this constant defamation and to stop the publication of matter detrimental to the city’s growth and material interest.”
“I do not intend,” he said, “to make any changes in the personnel of the District Attorney’s office until it is determined what fate Mr. Langdon shall meet, with the exception that Mr. Heney will not be retained. I will not have Mr. Heney in my office because I do not believe that his moral standing is equal to the position.”[101]