Under the heading of "The Demoralisation of a Greats City,"
the Times correspondent in San Francisco sends a remarkable account of the appalling growth and progress of municipal corruption in the capital of California since the Consolidation Act of State Senator Hawes—with its elaborate system of mutual checks—was superseded by the Charter of 1898. The Charter centralised power in the Mayor, and with the accession to office of Mr. Schmitz in 1901 the real control passed into the hands of Abraham Reef, an attorney of Franco-Jewish origin, who is now regarded as " the most' cunning and unscrupulous boss the United States has so far produced." Under this regime the most perfect system of " graft " ever evolved has been applied so thoroughly that, by various methods of indirect taxation and blackmail, every restaurant, saloon, theatre, gambling-house, and brothel, as well as the legitimate trading enterprises of the city, have been made' to pay toll to the gang of municipal officials controlled by the Mayor and his "boss." Things were bad enough before
the earthquake, but "singe the disaster of last April there has been a perfect carnival of graft " ; and though criminal pro- ceedings have now been begun against the gang, the, administration has not yet been frightened into abandoning its larger operations. The Times correspondent concludes his appalling survey of the record of the Labour Union Municipal Government of San Francisco with the remark that its members are the men who are loudest in demanding that the " immoral Japanese" should be excluded from the United States.
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