pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[41]

Later on, the Supervisors themselves confessed to having been bribed to grant the telephone franchise. The public, not at all blind to what was going on, believed, even at the time Mr. Calhoun made his suggestion, although there was no proof, that the Supervisors had been bribed.

San Francisco was opposed to any plan that would put trolley cars on the city’s best streets. Submission of the issue to the people would have been popular. Mr. Calhoun’s proposal that it be left to the Supervisors was met with suspicion, and open distrust of Mr. Calhoun’s motives.

In answer to the criticism which Mr. Calhoun’s suggestion had aroused, Mr. Calhoun, in a second letter to the Adornment Association, withdrew his offer to submit the question to the people, and announced the intention of his company to proceed with preparation of a plan for a uniform trolley system to be installed wherever the grades would permit.[42]

This second letter was made public in March, 1906, less than a month before the fire. The position taken by the United Railroads was generally condemned.[43] But the opposition took more practical form than mere denunciation. A group of capitalists, headed by Claus Spreckels, father of Rudolph Spreckels, Rudolph Spreckels and James D. Phelan, announced their intention to organize a street-railroad company, to demonstrate the practicability of operating electric cars in San Francisco, under the conduit system.

The plan was given immediate endorsement both by press and general public. The project was explained in detail to Mayor Schmitz, who in a published statement gave the enterprise his unqualified approval.[44] But when the incorporators sought further interview with Mayor Schmitz, they found themselves unable to secure a hearing.

The company, under the name of the Municipal Street Railways of San Francisco, was formed with Claus Spreckels, James D. Phelan, George Whittell, Rudolph Spreckels and Charles S. Wheeler as incorporators. The capital stock of the company was fixed at $14,000,000. Of this, $4,500,000 was subscribed, ten per cent. of which, $450,000, was paid over to the treasurer.[45]

With this $450,000 an experimental line, under the conduit system, was to be built on Bush street.[46]

The articles of incorporation provided that the franchises acquired under them should contain provisions for the acquisition by the City and County of San Francisco of the roads thus built.[47]

The new company filed its articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State at Sacramento on April 17, 1906.

In the early morning of the day following, April 18, came the San Francisco earthquake and fire. For the moment the public forgot all differences in the common disaster. But the lines of division between exploiter and builder could not be wiped out, not even by the destruction of the city. The contest, which had, without any one realizing its full significance, been fast coming to a head before the fire, was to take definite shape after the disaster.

CHAPTER IV.
San Francisco After the Fire.

The great San Francisco fire was brought under control Friday, April 20, 1906. The Sunday following, the first step was taken toward getting the scattered Board of Supervisors together. George B. Keane, clerk of the board, is authority for the statement that the meeting place was in a room back of Supervisor McGushin’s saloon.[48] The ashes of the burned city were still hot; the average citizen was thinking only of the next meal and shelter for the night for himself and dependents. But the public-service corporations were even then active in furthering plans which had been temporarily dropped while San Francisco was burning.

At the McGushin-saloon meeting, Keane found with the Supervisors Mr. Frick of the law firm of Thomas, Gerstle & Frick. Mr. Frick was on hand to represent the petitioners for the Home Telephone franchise, which, at the time of the disaster was pending before the board.

For months previous to the fire, no subject affecting a San Francisco public-service corporation had, with the single exception of the United Railroads’ scheme for substituting electric for cable service, created more discussion than the Home Telephone application for franchise. There had been allegations that the progress which, previous to the fire, the Home Company had made toward securing its franchise, had been paid for,[49] but for weeks after the fire few citizens had time to think about it. The people forgot for the time the issues which had before the disaster divided the city. But the agents for the public-service corporations did not forget. We find a representative of the Home Telephone Company picking his way over the hot ashes of the burned city to McGushin’s saloon to meet the Supervisors that the interests of his company might be preserved. The developments of the graft prosecution indicate that even as the Home Company was seeking out the Supervisors, the United Railroads was getting into touch with Ruef.[50]

But if the corporations were quick to avail themselves of the situation to secure privileges denied them before the fire, they were also active in the work of rehabilitation—so far as such activity served their plans and purposes.

This was well illustrated by the course of the United Railroads. Within a fortnight after the fire, that corporation had established efficient service over a number of its electric lines. For a time, passengers were carried without charge. On April 29 and 30, however, fares were collected from men, but not from women and children. With the beginning of May, fares were collected from all persons. For a time, in a glare of much publicity, the United Railroads contributed these collections to the fund for the relief of the stricken city.

The