to this bigger, finer task. And he was absorbed
for a while. It was an inspiring spectacle, that
of those fifty leading men leading a whole city
of men and women in the work for the common
good. But Spreckels was the first to see that the
grafters smelt the graft and that the fifty, reduced
to forty, caught the smell, whiffed, and dashed
all together — low politicians, high financiers,
and dignified attorneys — for the graft. Plerrin
was on hand; Harriman came flying to the rescue
and —to get his rails farther into the city. Calhoun came out to get, while the city was down,
the franchise held up before, but arranged for,
a nd — he got it. But Rudolph Spreckels saw
now that the fight wasn’t with Mr. Calhoun; and
neither was it with Schmitz and Ruef. It was
with some sort of a big, general condition. So
he went back to the big, general war he had
planned with Heney and Burns before the
earthquake; before that franchise for Calhoun
came up — his plan as outlined years before to
his friends at lunch, the day Ruef offered to lend
him Organized Labour to knock out Organized
Capital and seize a bond issue. Rudolph
Spreckels went on with his plan for such an
investigation and fight of the corruption in San
Francisco as he had made and won in San Francisco gas.
