ALL OUT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 306, 4 February 1910, Page 2

ALL OUT.

■ «TfrTHE CORRUPTERS OF SAN _ FRANCISCO, is . :;. NOT ONE SERVES HIS SENTENCE. Abraham Ruef, convicted of wholesale bribery in the municipal government of San Francisco, has been released after serving only a small part of his gaol sentence. Xhe reason is twofold: First, he found the gaol did not agree with his health; second, he lrad sufficient money and financial backing to bring an appeal and to give bonds of oyer £120,000. Two others of the convicted corruptionists have been freed for precisely the same reason. These are Michael Coffey, a member of the notorious Board of Supervisors (City Council) of which Ruef was the political boss, and Louis' Glass, the wealthy vice-president of a telephone company which gave a bribe to induce the Supervisors to keep another telephone coni-< pany out of the field. It will be remembered that the former Mayor,' Eugene Schmitz, who was also convicted of taking a bribe, was released on appeal because it was not stated in the indictment that he was "Mayor of San Francisco."

And so not one of the "grafters" is made to pay the penalty imposed by the courts. Ruef, Glass, " and Coffey are quite confident that they will win their appeals, and they are generally conceded more than an even chance. The result of the recent election, in which the reform party was utterly routed, has discouraged all efforts to prosecute the corruptionists : further. The present administration, which has been doing its utmost for three years' to bring" the Ruef-Schmitz crew to justice, has now accepted the verdict of the voters, who elected men pledged to a policy of discontinuing several of the prosecutions, The trials have all been adjourned till the new city government take office at the new year. No one expects that any serious attempt will be made to get Ruef, Coffey, or Glass back into gaol." > But there are two men in prisonnot men who were caught red-handed with the bribes or stolen franchises of the city in their possession, but two: Who were used as the. tools of the bigger sinners—.Pete Claudianos and E. A. !?.• Blake. Claiulianos wa& the man hired by an employee of the United Railroads (whose president, Patrick Calhoun, way indicted for bribery) t 0 dynamite the house of James Gallagher, the chief witness for the prosecution-the Supervisor who confessed that He had accepted the bribes on behalf of the rest of the Board. Claudianos was sent to prison, while the man who had hired him vanished. And Claudianos', who is just a Greek laborer, is too poor to appeal or to find the necessary bail, even 1 if he does, like Ruef, find the gaol air insanitary. Likewise Blake, who was convicted of paying a bribe to a juryman in the Ruef trial, is unable to gain his freedom, although he has put in an appeal, and although he doubtless would find a little liberty the very bes't thing for his stomach, he has not enough wealth behind him to get out on bail. He did not steal enough. But, be it noted, the two lawyers who defended Ruef, and who, Blake says, hired him to'-'fix"' the juryman, are still free men; a jury could not be found to agree on their guilt. Of course, it is all the result of partisan politics interfering with the administration of justice. Americans are s'o fond of their elective institutions that they are unwilling to keep even 1 their courts free from the corrupting influence. But the statement is changing. Many citizens and some States shave already broken with the old regime, and even in California a Bill was introduced in the Legislature this year, and lalmost passed, to make the election ot Judges non-partisan.—San Francisco correspondent Chris'tchurch Press.