CHAPTER XIX.
The Glass Trials and Conviction.
On the day that Mayor Schmitz was sentenced to serve five years in the penitentiary for extortion, six jurors were secured to try Louis Glass, for bribery.
Mr. Glass had been indicted with T. V. Halsey for alleged bribery transactions growing out of the opposition of the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company to competition in the San Francisco field. Mr. Halsey’s business was to watch, and, so far as lay in his power, to block, such opposition telephone companies as might seek entrance into San Francisco.
Mr. Glass was Mr. Halsey’s superior. To Glass, Halsey reported, and from Glass, Halsey took his orders. Eleven Supervisors had confessed that Halsey had paid them large sums to oppose the granting of a franchise to the Home Telephone Company. Testimony given before the Grand Jury had brought the source of the bribe money close to Halsey’s superior, Glass.
Glass was indicted. The specific charge on which he was brought to trial was that he had given Supervisor Charles Boxton a bribe of $5000.
As in all the graft cases, there had been in Mr. Glass’s defense technical attack upon the validity of the Grand Jury, demurrers, and other delaying moves. But point by point the prosecution had beaten down opposition, and by the time the Schmitz extortion case had been disposed of, District Attorney Langdon and his associates were able to proceed with the trial of Glass.[286]
The District Attorney’s office was represented by Heney. D. M. Delmas and T. C. Coogan appeared for Mr. Glass.
There were none of the difficulties in securing the jury, as were experienced in the later graft trials. The Glass jury was sworn two days after the trial opened.
Dr. Boxton took the stand and testified, with a minutia of detail, how the bribe had been paid to him. Dr. Boxton was the first of the Supervisors to testify before trial jury and public, of his corruption. During the next year and a half San Francisco was to hear the story repeated time after time from the lips of sixteen men who had occupied the supervisorial office. But Boxton was the first. The spectacle of a man testifying that he had taken bribes and betrayed the city was new; it was astonishing, thrilling with sensation.