A vacancy, therefore, existed in the Mayor’s office. Under the municipal charter the Supervisors alone were empowered to fill it. But sixteen of the Supervisors, having confessed to felonies, were taking no steps without the approval of the District Attorney. They would name for Mayor, him whom the District Attorney approved and no other. Naturally, Langdon consulted those associated with him in the Graft Prosecution. No better earnest of the sincerity and disinterestedness of Langdon and those who were assisting him is furnished than in this crisis. They had it within their power to select first Mayor and then Supervisors who would be utterly subservient to them. Instead, they proposed a plan by which representative associations were given opportunity to reorganize the municipal government by naming Mayor Schmitz’s successor.
Nor was there any hasty action. The office of Mayor was not declared vacant until after Schmitz had been sentenced to the penitentiary. But Schmitz was in the county jail and incompetent to act. It was of immediate necessity that a temporary successor be substituted. Until this were done, San Francisco would be without a chief executive. To meet the emergency, the Supervisors named Supervisor Gallagher to be acting Mayor.[249]
After the sentencing of Schmitz the rapidly developing situation made it necessary that the convicted official’s office be declared vacant and his successor appointed. But the successor had not been named, nor had plans for the change in administration been formulated.[250] In this further emergency, it was decided to name one of the Supervisors to be Mayor to serve until a permanent successor of Mayor Schmitz could be named. The unhappy Boxton[251] was decided upon. The Supervisors, by resolution, definitely declared the office of Mayor vacant and elected Supervisor Boxton to be Mayor.
On the day that Boxton was named Mayor of San Francisco, District Attorney Langdon made public a plan for a convention to select a Mayor to serve until the successor of Mayor Schmitz could be elected and qualified. Mr. Langdon proposed that the convention should be made up of thirty members, fifteen to be appointed by organized labor and fifteen by the organized commercial bodies. On the side of Labor were apportioned eight delegates to the Labor Council and seven to the Building Trades Council. The five commercial bodies, the Chamber of Commerce, Merchants’ Association, Board of Trade, Real Estate Board and Merchants’ Exchange, were allowed three delegates each. That the convention might proceed in its choice unhampered, the District Attorney pledged that he and his associates would wholly refrain from participation after the convention had assembled.[252]
But this did not suit the several factions at all. Admittedly, the Prosecution could name the Mayor. Each faction wanted its man named, and while there remained a chance for its man to be named, did not care to see the extraordinary power in the hands of the District Attorney delegated to the uncertainties of a convention.
In the scramble for advantage, the self-control and self-forgetting attitude of the members of the Prosecution, instead of exciting admiration, was condemned. The Examiner, referring to Langdon’s associates, for example, announced: “Their failure to agree on anyone has led to some alarm for fear their divergent political ambitions are making each of them endeavor to secure a place for his personal puppet.” Had the Prosecution named the Examiner’s “personal puppet,” this particular source of criticism would undoubtedly have been silenced and the Examiner’s vilification and abuse of the Prosecution during the years that followed averted. What is true of the Examiner in this regard is true of the other institutions and interests which, in this crisis of the city’s history, were clamoring for “recognition.”[253] District Attorney Langdon’s plan, on the whole, was not received in the spirit in which it was offered.
The Building Trades Council, under the influence of P. H. McCarthy and O. A. Tveitmoe, promptly rejected the District Attorney’s proposal and refused to name delegates.[254] This action influenced the Labor Council, which, on the ground that in the absence of delegates from the Building Trades Council the Labor Council representatives might be outvoted, refused to participate.
Of the five commercial bodies, the Real Estate Board alone promptly accepted the District Attorney’s invitation. The board named its three delegates and so notified the District Attorney.
The Merchants’ Exchange demanded that the number of delegates be increased from thirty to forty-five by the addition of fifteen professional men, and proposed that the convention name a new Board of Supervisors as well as Mayor.[255]
The Board of Trade refused to co-operate unless the delegates be increased in number by the addition of “professional men and others.”