The Grand Jury could not secure the attendance of Mr. Detweiler, for about the time of the investigation Mr. Detweiler mysteriously disappeared. The investigation into the affairs of the Home Company had, therefore, to be concluded without Mr. Detweiler’s testimony.
Following the policy of the stockholders of the Empire Construction Company, the officials of the United Railroads refused to testify. President Patrick Calhoun[194] and Thornwell Mullally, assistant to the president, when given opportunity to state their side of the case under oath, stood upon their constitutional rights, and declined to give evidence that might incriminate them.[195] They were accordingly excused from the Grand Jury room.
But the employees of the company did not escape so easily. When, for example, George Francis, William M. Abbott, George B. Willcutt and Celia McDermott refused to answer questions put to them in the Grand Jury room, they were haled before the Superior Court, where they were informed that they must testify.
In spite of the hostility of these witnesses, the prosecution succeeded in securing a wealth of data regarding $200,000 which passed into the hands of Tirey L. Ford and, according to the theory of the prosecution, from Ford to Ruef.
The prosecution established the fact that two days before Mayor Schmitz signed the trolley permit, that is to say, on May 22, 1906, Patrick Calhoun, as president of the United Railroads, received by telegraphic transfer from the East to the United States Mint at San Francisco, $200,000.[196] Two days later, the day the trolley permit was signed, President Calhoun took Ford to the Mint and instructed Superintendent of the Mint Leach to give Ford $50,000 of the $200,000. Ford told Leach that he wanted currency. The currency was finally secured by exchanging gold for bills at the Mint headquarters of the relief work then being carried on in San Francisco. These bills, it was shown, were all in small denominations, having been sent to San Francisco from all parts of the country by individual subscribers to the relief fund.
This money was taken away from the Mint, the testimony showed, by Ford and William M. Abbott.
Soon after, Ruef loaned Supervisor Rea[197] $3500. By a curious trick of fate Rea had leased a piece of property from Rudolph Spreckels. In payment on this lease he used the money that Ruef had loaned him. This money was all in bills of small denominations. Late in July Ruef gave Gallagher $45,000, all in bills of small denominations, as partial settlement with the Supervisors for granting the trolley permit. Gallagher gave Wilson of this money $5000, and the other Supervisors with the exception of Rea $2000 each. They all understood that it was because of the trolley franchise deal. The balance Gallagher retained for himself.
The confessing Supervisors, with the exception of Wilson and Rea, testified that their first payment on account of the trolley permit was $2000 each, in bills of small denominations. Wilson testified to having received $5000.
Later, Ford, making two trips to the Mint, drew out the $150,000 balance of the $200,000 that had been telegraphed to Calhoun’s credit. As before, the Mint paid him in gold, and as before, Ford exchanged the gold for currency. But instead of getting bills of small denomination, on the two trips which Ford made for that $150,000, he secured fifty and one hundred-dollar bills.
On the day that Ford drew the last of that $200,000 from the Mint, an agent in the employ of the prosecution followed Ruef from his office to the car barns in which Ford’s office was then located. A few days later Ruef gave Gallagher $40,000 in fifty and one hundred-dollar bills, the greater part of which Gallagher distributed among the Supervisors as second and final payment on account of the granting of the trolley permit.