The prosecution had been started by a small group of eminent citizens, bent
upon cleaning up their city, notorious for graft, misgovernment, and the
basest abuses of political power. They had assumed as a matter of course
that those of their own class, who for years had expressed in private
their bitter resentment against paying out small fortunes to the board of
supervisors every time they wanted a franchise, would be only too glad to
expose the malefactors.
But it immediately transpired that they had no intention whatever of
admitting to the world that they had been guilty of corruption and bribery.
They might have been "held up," forced to "come through," or renounce their
great enterprises; helpless, in other words; but the law had technical
terms for their part in the shameful transactions, and so had the public.
All solemnly vowed that they had neither been approached by the city
administration for bribe money, nor paid a cent for franchises, some of
which the prosecution knew had cost them no less than two hundred thousand
dollars. Therefore did the prosecutors change their tactics. Supervisors,
by various means, were induced to confess, and the Grand Jury indicted not
only the boss and the mayor, but a large number of eminent citizens.
Society was riven in twain. Life-long friends cut one another, and now and
again they burst into hysteria as they did it.
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