On the same day, ten indictments were returned against Theodore V. Halsey, of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, for the bribery of Supervisors to prevent the sale of a franchise to a competing telephone company. A number of indictments were found against A. K. Detweiler, for bribing Supervisors in the matter of the sale of the Home Telephone franchise. The Detweiler indictments, thirteen in number, were based upon payments of money by Ruef to Gallagher, and by Gallagher to different members of the board. On March 23, the Grand Jury returned nine indictments against Louis Glass, vice-president of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, based upon the bribing, through Halsey, of Supervisors to prevent the granting of a competing telephone franchise.
During the two months that followed, the Grand Jury continued at the steady grind of graft investigation. Finally, on May 24, one additional indictment[205] was brought against Halsey and two against Glass. On that date, fourteen indictments were returned against Patrick Calhoun, Thornwell Mullally, Tirey L. Ford, William M. Abbott,[206] Abraham Ruef and Mayor E. E. Schmitz, indicted jointly, for the bribery in connection with the granting of the over-head trolley permit.
The day following, May 25, G. H. Umbsen, J. E. Green, W. I. Brobeck and Abraham Ruef were jointly indicted fourteen times on charges of offering a bribe to fourteen Supervisors in the Parkside franchise matter. The same day, fourteen indictments were returned against Frank G. Drum, Abraham Ruef, Eugene E. Schmitz, Eugene de Sabla and John Martin on charges of giving and offering bribes to fourteen Supervisors in the matter of fixing the gas rates.
Still another series of graft indictments were to be found. Three prize-fight promoters, W. Britt, “Eddie” Graney and “Jimmie” Coffroth were, on nine counts, indicted jointly with Schmitz and Ruef for bribery in connection with the awarding to them of virtually a monopoly of the promotion of prize fighting in San Francisco.
CHAPTER XV.
Ruef Pleads Guilty to Extortion.[207]
While the Supervisors were making full confessions of their participation in the bribery transactions, and the Grand Jury was dragging from unwilling promoters, capitalists and corporation employees information as to the source of the corruption funds, Ruef’s days and nights were devoted to consideration of plans for his own safety. Ruef, after his arrest and confinement under Elisor Biggy, became one of the scramblers of his broken organization to save himself.
But Ruef was more clever, more far-seeing than any of the Supervisors. His course from the beginning indicates that, in considering confession, he carefully weighed against the power of the regularly constituted authorities of San Francisco to protect him if he testified for the State, the ability of organized corruptionists to punish for betrayal. Ruef realized that although the all-powerful State “machine,” labeled Republican, of which the San Francisco organization labeled Union Labor, which he had built up, was but a part, had for the moment lost control of the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, but the “machine” still dominated the other departments of the municipal government, as well as of the State government[208]. Ruef realized that Langdon might die; that the State Attorney General might set Langdon aside and himself conduct the graft prosecution. And he realized that some day a district attorney other than Langdon would be prosecutor in San Francisco. In any of these events, what would be the lot of the man who had betrayed the scarcely-known captains of the powerful machine?
On the other hand, the hour when the evidence which the District Attorney had accumulated against him would be presented before a trial jury, approached with deadly certainty.