Heney in the meantime had been taken to a hospital. There it was found that the wound was not necessarily fatal. The rumors current that Heney had been killed were denied. This tended to calm the excitement.
Nevertheless, San Francisco and all California were aroused as never before in the State’s history. In a twinkling, the results of months of misrepresentation, ridicule and abuse of the Prosecution were swept away. Haas’ bullet had not killed Heney,[410] but it had awakened the community to tardy realization of its responsibility.[411] Men who had laughed at the Examiner’s “Mutt cartoons“ ridiculing the Prosecution, now threatened to mob The Examiner office. Patrons of the defense-supporting Chronicle now voiced their utter condemnation of that paper. Thousands withdrew their subscriptions from the two publications. The time was ripe for the demagogue. An unpolitic word from the defense just then, an incendiary speech from some unwise partisan of the Prosecution, would have been sufficient to have sent a mob marching upon the jail in which Haas and Ruef were confined, or upon the residences of the indicted bribe-givers, or against the newspaper offices which for months had labored to make the Graft Prosecution unpopular.
There was a feeling that the criminal element was too powerfully intrenched to be reached through the ordinary legal channels. The feeling, which had subsided when the Graft Prosecution opened,[412] that the graft evil could not be corrected except by extra-legal means, was to some degree revived.
In this emergency, the leaders of the Graft Prosecution, by counseling moderation and observance of the law, did yeoman service in the keeping of good order in San Francisco.
The Citizens’ League of Justice[413] called a mass meeting for the Saturday evening following the shooting. Even in the call, the League urged there be no breach of the peace.
“Francis J. Heney,” the League’s call read, “has fallen by the hand of an assassin, shot from behind while fighting at his post in the cause of justice for the people of this city. He would be the first man to appeal to the calm reason of the citizens to preserve order and proceed only by the processes of law; to look not for vengeance, but to demand swift justice through the courts. We make the same appeal.”
Mayor Taylor presided at the meeting. Long before the hour set for the opening, the auditorium was packed to the doors, with thousands on the outside clamoring for entrance. Those in charge of the meeting were compelled to call it to order several minutes before they had intended.
Professor George H. Boke of the University of California Law School, and manager of the Citizens’ League of Justice, was to introduce Mayor Taylor. Several minutes before the time set for the meeting, the crowd started a cheer for Heney. The demonstration lasted for fully five minutes. Then some one started the cry, “Throw the Examiner out.” Hundreds half rose from their seats, their eyes bent upon the press table where representatives of The Examiner were seated.
Professor Boke at once grasped the significance of the movement, and acted on the instant. Stepping to the fore, he made a brief address introducing Mayor Taylor, thereby checking the threatened demonstration.
Mayor Taylor was quick to sound the keynote of the meeting. “Let us,” he said in introducing the first speaker, “see to it that no matter who else breaks the law, that we shall not break it.”[414]