"In this prosecution we have tried to be practical, to be effective. What would you have said if we had made a scapegoat of a petty criminal and let the giants go? What would you have said if in all this graft and corruption we had arrested and jailed two or three obscure Supervisors you had never heard of before they came to office, and will never hear of them again now that they are retired to private life, and had let escape the giants in crime? "There have been graft exposures before in the history of American municipalities and the graft has gone on. And it was bound to go on so long as the prosecutions failed to stop the sources of evil, to gather into the fold of the penitentiary the corrupt men of business and the corrupt political leaders who have dared to use weak men for their own ends. These giants in crime are perfectly willing that the physical life of the weak men they use shall be fed into the jails of the State to appease public wrath exactly as they have been willing to use up the moral life of these men to satisfy their own greedy needs in the Board of Supervisors. Profiting by the mistakes of previous prosecutions, this office has struck straight at the very roots of public graft: at the crooked public service corporations; but which of the criminals were to be allowed to give evidence for the State and enjoy its alluring protection; the giants of crime who have always been most responsible and who have always escaped or the petty, miserable fellows who have entered upon these things through ignorance and weakness? "Immunity had to be given in order that crime might be punished and it was given to the Supervisors that the very tap roots of political corruption might be torn from the soil in which they thrived. We did it because this prosecution has a moral as well as a legal significance. It is time to stop the cynicism of common men when they view democracy and say it is for the powerful and the rich: that the poor must go to jail for the theft of bread and the rich escape for the theft of privilege, the purchase of men's souls and the degradation of government. It is time to stop the brazen and confident effrontery of the irresponsible criminal rich, who commit crimes and rest back, thinking they can buy judges as they bought legislators and executives, and knowing they can buy legal talent to interpose every technicality in every courtroom until justice is a human travesty tangled in its own web.