“Banker Hellman says not. He has been to New York and he says ‘New York’ wants the Prosecutions stopped, and ‘New York’ will not lend any more money until they are stopped.
“What is Banker Hellman’s ‘New York?’ It is certain banks and certain syndicates in New York. And it is the San Francisco officials of precisely these syndicates that you are now prosecuting. Of course, Patrick Calhoun, of New York, wants the prosecution of Patrick Calhoun of San Francisco stopped. It is Banker Hellman’s privilege to have a mere pendulum which swings from his San Francisco office to his New York office and thinks it is in New York. But it is not incumbent on you to share that mental deficiency. If Banker Hellman should announce in New York that he was going to discuss the San Francisco situation, his audience would consist of the New York partners of the San Francisco grafters. He thinks that is ‘New York.’ The real New York would neither know nor care. It never heard of Banker Hellman. But if Francis J. Heney should be announced to discuss the San Francisco situation in New York, there is not a place of assemblage in the city big enough to hold the people who would want to hear and see him. The whole nation knows Heney and it has made up its mind about him. It is waiting to see what you do, before it makes up its mind about you, too.
“‘The prosecutions must stop, some time,’ to be sure. But who has earned from San Francisco the right to say when? When Francis J. Heney says it is time to quit, then it is time; not before. He has given his time, his strength, and almost his life for you. He has purified your politics and regulated your government. He has redeemed your city’s name in the esteem of the world. He is making for you a fight which no one ever had the courage, the persistence or the ability to make before. He is not tired yet and he has not surrendered yet. Suppose you leave it to him, when it is time to quit.
“People of San Francisco, the world is looking on. It cannot determine your decision. Neither can you determine what it will think of that decision, when it is made.”
Heney on the day after the election issued the following statement:
“The first battle for equality before the law has been fought and lost, but the war against graft will continue to be waged by all true soldiers who have been fighting with me in the great cause of common honesty, common decency, and civic righteousness.
“The fight between the forces of evil and the forces of good is and must be a perpetual one. The first battle of Bull Run cast gloom over the entire earth, but that disaster only inspired the immortal Lincoln and his followers with stern resolution and fresh courage.
“San Francisco has received a sad blow and the cause of equality before the law a great setback, but be of good cheer and take fresh courage, you many thousands of good men and women who have joined in this fight for the maintenance of the purity and protection of our homes and the uplifting of the moral standards of our city!
“We have been defeated in this election, but the sober moral sense of the community will again reassert itself and San Francisco will vindicate herself before the world.