es
for more frugal government seemed to be fulfilled. But all encouraging
symptoms soon vanished. Partizan rule followed, encouraged by the
tinkering of the legislature, which imposed on the charter layer upon
layer of amendments, dictated by partizan craft, not by local needs.
The administrative departments were managed by Boards of Commissioners,
under the dictation of "Blind Boss Buckley," who governed his kingdom
for many years with the despotic benevolence characteristic of his kind.
The citizens saw their money squandered and their public improvements
lagging. It took twenty-five years to complete the City Hall, at a cost
of $5,500,000. An official of the Citizens' Non-partizan party, in 1895,
said: "There is no city in the Union with a quarter of a million people,
which would not be the better for a little judicious hanging."

The repeated attempts made by citizens of San Francisco to get a new
charter finally succeeded, and in 1900 the city hopefully entered a new
epoch under a charter of its own making which contained several radical
changes. Executive responsibility was centered in the mayor, fortified
by a comprehensive civil service. The foundations were laid for
municipal ownership of public utilities, and the initiative and
referendum were adopted for all public franchises. The legislative power
was vested in a board of eighteen supervisors elected at large.

No other American city so dramatically represents the futility of
basing political optimism on a mere plan. It was only a step from the
mediocrity enthroned by the first election under the new charter to the
gross inefficiency and corruption of a new ring, under a new boss. A
Grand Jury (called the "Andrews Jury") made a report indicating that
the administration was trafficking in favors sold to gamblers,
prize-fighters, criminals, and the whole gamut of the underworld; that
illegal profits were being reaped from illegal contracts, and that every
branch of the executive department was honeycombed with corruption. The
Grand Jury believed and said all this, but it lacked the legal proof
upon which Mayor Schmitz and his accomplices could be indicted. In spite
of this report, Schmitz was reelected in 1905 as the candidate of the
Labor-Union party.

Now graft in San Francisco became simply universal. George Kennan,
summarizing the practices of the looters, says they "took toll
everywhere from everybody and in almost every imaginable way: they went
into