“There never would have been doubt anywhere about Taylor’s successor,” said the Call In its issue of November 5, “if it had not been for the grossly selfish and unpatriotic course of Daniel A. Ryan. The one possibility of McCarthy’s election was opened to him by Ryan. Failing of other support, Ryan turned renegade to all his party professions and went into an infamous alliance with that arch enemy of Republicanism, Hearst. For four weeks he has been scrambling for votes.... Ryan has fully revealed himself as a cheap politician itching for office. He has boasted of his youth, and yet he was the first of the candidates to break down and go to bed. He has declaimed about his own honesty, until his voice is in tatters and has filled the air with promises of what he would do if elected. Never has he explained or attempted to explain the nature of those ‘certain concessions’ that led him to nominate himself, although he knew that in so doing he was Jeopardizing the future of his city.”
Said the Chronicle of Mr. Ryan’s candidacy in its issue of October 3, 1907: “The Chronicle has neither apologies nor regrets for urging its readers to support the Regular Republican League movement headed by Daniel A. Ryan. We believed at the time, as others believed, that Mr. Ryan’s sole desire was good government for San Francisco and that such desire was unsmirched by personal ambition. General confidence in the sincerity of Mr. Ryan and his associates led to the triumphant election of the delegates to the Republican convention named and approved by Mr. Ryan, which was accepted throughout the country as evidence that the people of San Francisco were sound at heart.
“When we urged the public to support the Ryan primary tickets, we did so, not in the interest of Mr. Ryan, but in the interest of good government. We considered Mr. Ryan in the light of a useful and public-spirited citizen, upon whom, in due time, the people would delight to confer official honors should he be willing to accept them. Those who voted the Ryan ticket at the primaries did not vote for Mr. Ryan, but for the cause which he championed. As for considering him a candidate for Mayor, nobody thought of it. It is no disparagement to a young man like Mr. Ryan to say that as yet he has no such standing in the community as justifies him in aspiring to such an honor.”
In its issue of October 5 the Chronicle said: “The moral collapse of Daniel A. Ryan is deeply regretted by every lover of San Francisco. It is not a matter of the rise or fall of one man. It is a question of whether the people will ever again trust any man who appears as a leader of reform. Few men ever get such an opportunity as Mr. Ryan has thrown away. Doubtless the lesson is for the people never again to trust an unknown man. It is not too much to ask of any aspirant to leadership on an important scale that he shall have some record of honorable achievement of some kind as an earnest of what to expect of him should the confidence reposed in him place him in a position of power.”
The Call, in speaking of the Taylor-Langdon meeting said: “Young Mr. Ryan ought to have been at that meeting. We have nothing against Mr. Ryan except that he is not the man of the hour. We shall not even reproach him with his youth. That is not his fault and he will get over that. But he is not the man of the hour. The people have said it. Mr. Ryan embodies no principle. To the people of San Francisco he means nothing in particular at this critical time. He might have read that message in the mighty roar that went up from the meeting in welcome of Dr. Taylor. Mayor Taylor stands for something, stands for much. Mr. Ryan has only his own ambition and a certain command of language.”
The San Francisco Call, in its issue of November 5, charged that orders had gone out from the United Railroads to “vote for McCarthy and the Union Labor ticket—straight.” In the cars of the United Railroads appeared dodgers which read: “Workingmen. Workingmen—Are you going to put a big stick into Spreckels’ hands to club you over the head with?”