Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (44 page)

To ensure that law and order continued to rule the teeming streets of San Francisco, the Vigilance Committee, enjoying full public support, moved into a fortress-like facility complete with jail cells, a court room, and an outer wall defensible against any expected attacks by a larger military presence. The vigilantes called their new digs Fort Gunnybags, and they ruled the streets of the city with a steely gaze and an iron fist. It worked, and within two months they reduced criminal activity to a handful of minor robberies and no murders, where before there had been almost daily killings and lootings around the clock.

But that is hardly all there was to San Francisco's history of corruption and vice. In fact, its darkest days lay ahead. Within months following Casey's hanging, the Vigilance Committee once again backed down and turned the reins of power over to the city's hired officials, convinced that a proper government was preferable to the long-term health of their fair city. Unfortunately history repeated itself. It would take a few years, but corruption once again reared its mangy head.

The city's first line of defense against the ever-increasing influx of lowlifes was a paltry police force that was underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of miscreants. By 1871 the city had a mere one hundred policemen, a ratio of one officer to 1,445 long-term and transitory inhabitants, a shocking figure when compared with New York's ratio of 1 to 464. By the 1890s the city was home to more than three thousand establishments with liquor licenses and another two thousand operating without licenses.

Most of the customers of these dens of debauchery, from saloons to cancan houses to dance halls, were men. And most of the employees were women instructed to chat up the men to get them to buy overpriced, watered-down drinks.

If that didn't work, they would drug the mark's drinks, making it easier for thugs, also employed by the establishment, to subdue them later in the alley. Often the hired hooligans would hit the hapless drunks too hard and kill them—all in a night's work along the Barbary Coast. The most common patrons of these dives were sailors looking for a quick, good time. Frequently they ended up drugged and robbed, and when they came to the next morning, they found themselves shanghaied, coursing out at sea aboard a strange ship. What a hangover.

One of the most corrupt individuals in San Francisco's history (now that's saying something), Eugene Schmitz was also the mayor of that city at the turn of the century. In fact, for years following his conviction on a bevy of charges of corruption, he was the poster boy for graft and greed among politicos nationwide. And yet, as corrupt as Schmitz was, the man who worked his puppet strings was even more corrupt. Abraham Ruef was an attorney and a behind-the-scenes, high-powered manipulator, the man who made Schmitz and many others the corrupt cads they were.

Interestingly, Abraham Rueff (he would later drop one “f”) pursued a budding interest in politics while a young student at the University of California at Berkeley. Though he majored in classical studies and graduated with high honors at eighteen, this young man, considered a prodigy—he spoke eight languages—while a student also developed a keen interest in the raging corruption of the local politics of his hometown of San Francisco.

With friends, Ruef established the Municipal Reform League, a think tank whose members corresponded with like-minded individuals throughout the country, including young Theodore Roosevelt. Over time Ruef's ideals blunted while sparring with corrupt politicians and businessmen such as those of Southern Pacific Railroad, which wielded considerable control over both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Eventually Ruef grew tired of swimming against the current. But instead of resorting to time-tested but wearying strong-arm tactics employed by behind-the-scenes political haymakers, the erudite, sophisticated young Ruef wined and dined, smooth-talked and sweet-talked his way into indispensible positions in city government. Though he aspired to a position of power, the pervasive allure of money was not as big a draw to Ruef. Rather he sought a way to pose serious opposition to the entrenched big-money machine manipulating San Francisco politics. His trump card was his intense study and budding knowledge of the rise of the organized labor movement.

So, in 1901 Ruef set about building his own political machine, the Union Labor Party, a force he expected would be so formidable that it would one day soon take control of the city. He felt he could count on no one but himself to steer that ship, though he would appoint yes-men, answerable only to him, to key positions within city government. An early order of business was to fill the position of mayor. As luck—or more to the point, proper planning—would have it, 1901 was an election year in San Francisco.

Ruef selected a man who he was confident could become his ideal mayoral candidate. So far ahead did Ruef speculate that the position of mayor would be but a stepping stone to the California governor's seat—not for himself but for his groomed appointee.

He chose Eugene “Handsome Gene” Schmitz, a tall, charismatic, young married man with two children and a clean record—no mean feat in San Francisco. Poor Eugene, if he knew what was coming, would have skipped town in the middle of the night.

Before becoming Ruef's stooge, Schmitz was a promising young violinist and composer. He also led the city orchestra and eventually became president of the Musicians' Union in San Francisco—the extent of his political activity prior to being beckoned by Ruef.

Ruef set about building the perfect political candidate, literally schooling Schmitz in everything from the California Constitution and San Francisco city articles (which he insisted Schmitz memorize) to telling Schmitz how to dress. He wrote all of Schmitz's campaign speeches and tightly controlled the man's social and political appearance calendar. And it paid off.

The only man unsurprised by Eugene Schmitz's election to the office of mayor in the fall of 1901 appeared to be Ruef. He smiled and nodded, already busily planning the future. Not only did Schmitz win the election, but in doing so he became the first Union Labor Party candidate to be elected mayor in the United States. The next five years were busy, heady times for the upstart political boss. In addition to the office of mayor, in time Ruef exerted control over the chief of police, a handful of judges, and the city's Board of Supervisors.

His first real misstep—it had to come at some point—was in appointing William L. Langton as district attorney. Shortly after he assumed his role in 1905, he did what the young Ruef had been so passionate about: Langton set into motion plans that would demolish the power broker's carefully constructed enterprise. He revived all-but-buried vice laws, ignored for so long because they were regarded as impediments to the welfare of the city, more to the point, the wallets of the city's power brokers.

Still the premier go-to place for all manner of illicit entertainment and discrete distraction, San Francisco's numerous brothels, gambling dens, and dance halls thrived for decades because their owners and operators paid huge bribes and kickback fees to city officials. This look-the-other-way approach kept much of the city afloat, most notably the Barbary Coast district.

This had gone on for so long it was seen as the easiest and most legitimate way of keeping the clanking machinery of City Hall in operation. Trouble was, it was illegal . . . and thriving more than ever under the Schmitz (read: Ruef) administration. But not only was DA Langton no one's stooge, he was also unimpressed with and embarrassed by his city's dubious national distinction as a sink pit of debauchery.

Bolstering Langton's efforts in his crusade of cleanup from within the belly of the beast was an increasing hue-and-cry from a citizenry long disgusted with the goings-on of the Barbary Coast district. Add to that was the growing national prohibitionist movement inciting equal parts interest and ire in the city.

Ruef had long since left behind his old chums intent on reforming the corrupt political machine and had himself become puppet master of that very machine he long before had reviled. But his old cronies hadn't let go of their dreams of reform. In fact, they'd only grown more powerful, and they did not like what Ruef had done to their fair city.

DA Langton had the backing of the town's most powerful publisher, Fremont Older, and his newspaper, the
Bulletin
. Not only that, but Older attracted the well-connected millionaire Rudolph Spreckels to the cause. Spreckels jumped in with both feet—and a sizable wallet—and funded a federal investigation into the rampant corruption at San Francisco City Hall. Just when it looked as if headway was being made, and heads would soon roll, Mother Nature intervened.

At 5:12 a.m., on April 18, 1906, a tremendous earthquake, magnitude of 7.8, violently fibrillated the heart of San Francisco. Immediate and devastating fires broke out citywide, causing unprecedented damage. The earthquake and fires ultimately destroyed more than 80 percent of the city and caused the deaths of three thousand people.

That first day rioting and looting ran rampant throughout the city. Schmitz responded with a shoot-to-kill edict regarded as heavy handed:

Proclamation by the Mayor: The Federal Troops, the members of the Regular Police Force and all Special Police Officers have been authorized by me to KILL any and all persons found engaged in Looting or in the Commission of Any Other Crime.

I have directed all the Gas and Electric Lighting Co.'s not to turn on Gas or Electricity until I order them to do so. You may therefore expect the city to remain in darkness for an indefinite time.

I request all citizens to remain at home from darkness until daylight every night until order is restored.

I WARN all Citizens of the danger of fire from Damaged or Destroyed Chimneys, Broken or Leaking Gas Pipes or Fixtures, or any like cause.

E.E. Schmitz, Mayor, Dated April 18, 1906

The initial tumult of San Francisco's Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 eventually subsided to a constant but low-level thrum of activity of rebirth and rebuilding. And the political reformers were more determined than ever to sweep clean the offices lining the cracked corridors of City Hall.

Just what had been going on in those dens of greed? Privileges, favors, and palm greasing of the most blatant order. Despite long and loud citizen opposition, the privately owned street railway company sought the right to transform overhead cables for use with its street trolley system. So it paid someone at city hall a $200,000 bribe and its request was granted. A telephone company forked over a sizable wad of cash to prevent its rival from horning in on its turf, and then the rival upped the ante. The gas company fixed its rate from the expected, lobbied-for 75 cents to 85 cents.

In 1907 Ruef, Schmitz, and a long list of other city officials, as well as on-the-take street railway, gas, electric, and telephone company bigwigs, were all indicted by the grand jury. Their longtime schemes of corporate greed had been outed. Mayor Schmitz was indicted on twenty-seven counts of graft and bribery. He was convicted and received the maximum penalty allowed by law. However, his conviction, as well as most of those earned by the others, was overturned on appeal.

A number of the guilty turned state's evidence, ratting out their fellow felons, in order to evade imprisonment. That left Abe Ruef alone on the dais to take the full brunt of the long-corrupt system. There were rumors of anti-Semitism on the prosecution's behalf, which played against him and in favor of his former cohorts, whose punishments were lessened.

Ruef's trial was a protracted affair peppered with appeals and much media coverage. In the end his wealth, power, and political connections did Ruef little good—he was convicted in 1911 of bribery and was subsequently sent to San Quentin, where he was to serve fourteen years, the maximum allowed for the crime.

Oddly enough, his staunchest enemy, the publisher Fremont Older, felt that Ruef's punishment was unduly harsh. He and Ruef, once enemies, struck up a correspondence while Ruef moldered in prison, and the newspaperman even paid Ruef to pen a detailed account of his long experience in and around city politics, which was then serialized in the
Bulletin
.

Older actively pursued appeals and pardons on Ruef's behalf, but none materialized. However, Ruef was released in 1915 after vowing he would abstain from engaging in politics. Apparently he was true to his word. Sadly, Abraham Ruef has been thus far remembered almost exclusively for his part in the corruption of the city, something that predated his time in San Francisco politics and something that continued to linger like a bad odor long after he left.

As with so many men whose reach exceeded their grasp, Ruef was much more than a corrupt political boss. He left behind a number of contributions to his city that he never crowed about. Though he was worth a million dollars when he entered prison, he passed away a pauper on February 29, 1936, in the city he had three decades before presided over. To his end, Ruef maintained his intelligence, poise, and quick wit, and rarely spoke of those long-gone, heady days when he ruled San Francisco, inside and out.