“I disagreed on the ground that Heney, Spreckels and the other members of the prosecution were not on trial as they insisted, and that the other matters, such as the theft of reports and suppression of testimony, had only been touched upon during the trial to prove that Calhoun knew that the bribery deal had been carried through.
“‘Can’t you give Calhoun the benefit of the doubt, that he paid this money as a fee?’ was the burden of the others’ argument. ‘I would be willing to extend him every chance,’ I replied, ‘but why has he not introduced these vouchers of the United Railroads in court, then we might see what was paid to bribe the juries in the Ford trials.’ After this they dropped me like a red-hot stove. I seemed to have struck home. It was a terrifying ordeal to stand off these ten men for twelve hours, but I held firmly to my course and voted throughout upon my conscience. I should have been ashamed to have lifted my head in the future had I fallen down and voted for an acquittal. When the deputy, Mr. Coyle, called to convey the word to Judge Lawlor as to the clearness of an agreement being reached, I met him at the door that night. ‘We shall never reach an agreement,’ I replied, ‘unless these men come over to my side. That I fear shall never come to pass.’ The claim has been made in the Globe that I asked for a secret ballot. That is an untruth, as is the statement that I am a Socialist. Not that I am opposed to Socialism, but I have never been inclined to their views. Our political outlooks differ. When I told Coyle that there was no chance of a verdict being reached, the other jurors, one of those standing alongside of me, punched me in the ribs in an effort to make me shut up, as they figured that they ought to be able to convince me. I have received letters from all over the State; friends and acquaintances, even utter strangers, congratulating me upon my stand in the Calhoun case and my vote for conviction.”
Calhoun, after the disagreement of the jury that tried him, issued a statement to the press in which he bitterly denounced those who were responsible for the prosecution, and hinted at retaliation. He continued to insist that Heney was a corrupt official: “There lies in the courtroom,” said Calhoun, “forty checks made by Mr. Rudolph Spreckels to Mr. Francis J. Heney since his alleged appointment as Assistant District Attorney. Those checks were deposited in the American National Bank to his private account. They aggregate $23,800. The first of them amounted to $4,900. They are the price of his infamy. He can not escape the fact that he is a corrupt public official by the contention that he has been engaged in a holy crusade. He can not defend the acceptance of money from a private citizen for the express purpose of enabling him to devote himself exclusively to the so-called Graft Prosecution without committing the crime of accepting a bribe. I here make the formal and specific charge that Francis J. Heney stands side by side with James L. Gallagher as a corrupt public official. I charge him with having accepted bribes and I also charge Rudolph Spreckels and James D. Phelan with having given him the bribes; and if we can get a fair District Attorney in the city of San Francisco I propose at the proper time and in the proper way to submit formal charges against Heney for having received bribes and Spreckels and Phelan for having paid them.”
Of Calhoun’s threat of prosecution, The Call in its issue of June 22, 1909, said:
“In that soiled and motley retinue of strikers and heelers, jury fixers and gaspipe men that the head of the United Railroads has gathered about him were many who made it a business to proclaim that when the indictments came to the test of fact in court the disposition of that $200,000 would be explained as a perfectly innocent matter in the simplest possible manner. How these promises have been fulfilled we know. The mystery of that $200,000 remains as dark as ever. Not even the stockholders of the company are invited into the confidence of its president. It is not now the question, Where did he get it? but What did he do with it?
“As long as that question remains unanswered by or for Calhoun and as long as he refuses to undergo cross examination and the ordinary legal tests of proof, just so long will the whole American public believe him guilty of bribery. As for his threat of some sort of vague legal proceedings against the prosecutors, that will merely provoke a laugh, as men do laugh at a cheap and obvious bluff.”
The free press, not only of California but of the entire nation, protested against such a course. “San Francisco,” said the Pittsburgh Times-Gazette, “owes it to the nation to continue her fight against the big grafters of that town. If she lets up now the grafters the country over will take heart, and the next time it becomes necessary to go after the tribe, it will be more difficult even than it has been in San Francisco to convict a briber.”