What do you think?
Rate this book
Boss Ruef's San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 22, 2019
The first half of this book shows how a private citizen, "Boss" Abe Ruef, managed to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from major companies and run the city of San Francisco, its mayor, and its Board of Supervisors for the years from 1901 to 1907.
By tying his private real estate fortune and Republican connections into a new "United Labor Party" after the vicous teamster strikes of 1901, which discredited reigning Democratic Mayor James Phelan, Ruef managed to elect the naive but charismatic Eugene Schmitz, a union bandleader, to the mayoralty. After a new mechanical voting machine eased straight-ticket voting in 1905, Ruef managed to capture every one of the seats of the Board of Supervisors. In the years of 1905 to 1907, Ruef took blocks of currency from the real estate promoters at the Parkside Corporation for a new streetcar line down 20th street; from the Home Telephone Company (which invented the touch-tone phone and competed with AT&T) for a new telephone franchise; from Patrick Calhoun's (grandson of the famous Southern Senator) United Railroads Company, in order to allow the replacement old cablecars and horsecars with trolley lines; and seemingly countless other small businesses, from the prostitute-infused "French restaurants" to a "fight ring" of local boxing clubs. He then distributed the money to the Board and Schmitz with the understanding that they should vote correctly, which all, except for Supervisor Lea, did.
The second half of the book is much more tedious and less interesting than the first, but it too has its moments. It shows how the crusading journalist Fremont Older of the San Francisco Bulletin, tied in with Rudolph Spreckels, the sugar scion who was angered by the United Railroads placing of trolley lines near his home on Pacific Street, and national figures like attorney Francis Heney, special detective William J. Burns, and even President Theodore Roosevelt himself, to bring down the Ruef machine. Heney and Burns, who made a name for themselves with the first successful prosecution of a U.S. Senator, John N. Mitchell, in the Oregon land fraud case, offered just about everyone in city government immunity if they would testify against the people they saw as the real villains, the bribing corporations. They only succeeded in jailing the heads of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph companies, who bribed the supervisors directly, and Abe Ruef himself, after he refused to claim the companies who "bribed" him with attorneys fees had any clear understanding that the money would go to politicians. By 1909, the people became sick at the prosecutions hard-ball tactics and voted out the district attorney, and voted in a new United Labor Party. By 1912, Ruef was free again and a respected citizen.
Much of this book reads like a court-transcript, with records of everything from change of venue requests to demurrer to the facts writs, but that documentation also creates a surprising window into how corruption worked in the early 20th century United States. It was both more pervasive, and yet more ambiguous in its particulars, than I had thought.
By tying his private real estate fortune and Republican connections into a new "United Labor Party" after the vicous teamster strikes of 1901, which discredited reigning Democratic Mayor James Phelan, Ruef managed to elect the naive but charismatic Eugene Schmitz, a union bandleader, to the mayoralty. After a new mechanical voting machine eased straight-ticket voting in 1905, Ruef managed to capture every one of the seats of the Board of Supervisors. In the years of 1905 to 1907, Ruef took blocks of currency from the real estate promoters at the Parkside Corporation for a new streetcar line down 20th street; from the Home Telephone Company (which invented the touch-tone phone and competed with AT&T) for a new telephone franchise; from Patrick Calhoun's (grandson of the famous Southern Senator) United Railroads Company, in order to allow the replacement old cablecars and horsecars with trolley lines; and seemingly countless other small businesses, from the prostitute-infused "French restaurants" to a "fight ring" of local boxing clubs. He then distributed the money to the Board and Schmitz with the understanding that they should vote correctly, which all, except for Supervisor Lea, did.
The second half of the book is much more tedious and less interesting than the first, but it too has its moments. It shows how the crusading journalist Fremont Older of the San Francisco Bulletin, tied in with Rudolph Spreckels, the sugar scion who was angered by the United Railroads placing of trolley lines near his home on Pacific Street, and national figures like attorney Francis Heney, special detective William J. Burns, and even President Theodore Roosevelt himself, to bring down the Ruef machine. Heney and Burns, who made a name for themselves with the first successful prosecution of a U.S. Senator, John N. Mitchell, in the Oregon land fraud case, offered just about everyone in city government immunity if they would testify against the people they saw as the real villains, the bribing corporations. They only succeeded in jailing the heads of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph companies, who bribed the supervisors directly, and Abe Ruef himself, after he refused to claim the companies who "bribed" him with attorneys fees had any clear understanding that the money would go to politicians. By 1909, the people became sick at the prosecutions hard-ball tactics and voted out the district attorney, and voted in a new United Labor Party. By 1912, Ruef was free again and a respected citizen.
Much of this book reads like a court-transcript, with records of everything from change of venue requests to demurrer to the facts writs, but that documentation also creates a surprising window into how corruption worked in the early 20th century United States. It was both more pervasive, and yet more ambiguous in its particulars, than I had thought.
January 15, 2015
Wonderful. Proof that real life can be more vivid than fiction. I purchased this book for research purposes, half fearful that it might be too dry to get through. Quite the opposite. I devoured the majority of this book, as it remains exciting from start to finish (with perhaps some exceptions when granularity is introduced). If you love San Francisco or political history in general, read this book.
March 6, 2014
A rich account of an amazing Era in San Francisco politics. My favorite passage concerns the 1905 City elections when, in addition to supporting four Republican members of the Board of Supervisiors, who were sympathetic to the Union Labor Party and Mayor Schmitz, Ruef ran fourteen Union Labor Party candidates, merely to gain votes for Schmitz, with no expectations that they would be elected against the combined Republican/Democratic slate. When the dust cleared, Ruef was confronted with a Board consisting of four politicians, one honest man (Louis Rea), and thirteen non-entities, all clamoring open-mouthed for bribes. It reads like something out of a Donald E. Westlake novel. That being said, through the course of his career, Ruef displayed a political acumen which makes Willie Brown seem like an amateur.
December 4, 2009
It's San Francisco history that's difficult to find elsewhere, but not an easy book to read in general. In short, it details post-Mayor Phelan 1904 - 1907 (or so) SF with its amazing level of graft and self-dealing. The mayor was elected under the banner of the "union labor party" though the title is a misnomer insofar as the "party" was comprised of a few guys who slid to victory under the name. I thought it would have more info regarding union history of the time, but it's pretty desolate in that area. I'm only half-way through and haven't reached the courtroom scenes where "Boss Ruef" is prosected and which involve at least one courtroom shooting (of the prosecutor, I believe)... the wild west...
February 29, 2008
This history of the city I lived and worked in is fasinating. The old-time political bosses make for compeling reading.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews