Ruef, but it seems to me that there is another side to this question--a political side. The people of San Francisco are at last all behind your administration. What they need in this crisis is leadership, and we will have to take such leadership as you give us; and now that everybody is with you, and even the Bulletin has quit, it is not good policy on your part to stir up another newspaper war. The Examiner has been your friend ever since Schmitz was first elected, and it will not swallow the trolley proposition in its present form, and it is charging your administration with corruption. If it persists in its fight it will eventually break your back. It seems to me that it would be a comparatively easy matter to placate this opposition by exacting some compensation for this permit, either in the way of cash or by way of a percentage of the proceeds of the road, or you might limit it as to time; give them a permit for five or ten years. You have them at your mercy and they are bound to accept whatever terms you prescribe.' Mr. Ruef then said: 'To hell with the Examiner, no public man can afford to swallow that paper. This thing will go through on Monday. It is all settled.' And then I said: 'You don't need me then,' and Mr. Calhoun said: 'I don't think we do, Mr. Sanderson.' That is all the conversation, or that is substantially all the conversation that took place in regard to that matter." [62] Said the Examiner in its issue of May 16, 1906: "It looks very much as if Patrick Calhoun, Thornwell Mullally and their pals of the United Railroads had sneaked up behind San Francisco just as she lay wounded from earthquake and conflagration. In the guise of helping her, they were caught picking her pocket. If the Supervisors aid and abet them, the people will be warranted in setting up their effigies in lasting bronze, a group of everlasting infamy, with the inscription: 'THESE MEN LOOTED SAN FRANCISCO AT THE TIME OF THE GREAT FIRE OF 1906.'" [63] Of the failure to exact pay for the franchise, the Examiner of May 17, 1906, said: "Mayor Schmitz and the Board of Supervisors must know, and if they do not know they are now informed, that the franchises they propose to give away to the United Railroads are worth a great deal of money to the city of San Francisco, and they certainly do know that the city never was so greatly in need of money as now. To give away so much of value at such a time is so hideous a crime that it will leave a scar upon the reputation of everybody concerned in it, no matter what that reputation has been up to the time of the infamy." [64] The Supervisors' letter to the Examiner was as follows: "San Francisco, Cal., May 26, 1906.