Most Expensive Meal in American History

CHARLES EVANS HUGHES IN SAN FRANCISCO

With the exception of the single day Charles Evans Hughes campaigned in San Francisco, the law and order committee had little lasting effect on San Francisco or California politics. The open shop theory was the prime justification for its existence and the heyday of the robber Barons were at an end. Unionization was about to come age. In two decade the Mooney-Billings Affair would be a footnote in a book of California history or a short aside in an upper division class in American history. But the committee overestimated its important in San Francisco and at a critical moment made a badly calculated decision which would have long range national and international ramifications.

The roots of Charles Evans Hughes’ defeat sank deep in the soil of American politics. Since the turn of the Century — 1899 to 1900 — the left wing of the Republican Party had felt that it was being consistently disenfranchised by its more conservative colleagues. Ample proof of the wave of reformism in American seemed to be in evidence with the growing popularity of Eugene V. Debs. Though Debs stood on the far left fringe of the American political spectrum, his ballot box popularity had risen more than nine-fold from 1900 to 1912 and many reformers looked at Debs as the harbinger of new American enlightenment.

In 1912 came a catalyst. Dissatisfied with the policies of his political protégé, Theodore Roosevelt, led a coterie of left wing Republican out of the party to form the Bull Moose Party — more commonly known as the Progressive party. But the Progressive experiment was a badly-timed fling at splinter politics. Fueled more by crusading fervor than electorate support, the Progressive Party did little but insure the success of the Democrats.

The ensuing lop-sided Democratic victory in 1912 seemed to indicate that the Republican Party was nothing more than a lively corpse. Though Woodrow Wilson only took 41.9% of the popular vote, he captured a whopping 81.9% of the electoral vote. This was the greatest electoral victory since Abraham Lincoln trounced General George B. McClellan in 1864. Even more startling, Wilson beat the incumbent President, William Howard Taft. The Progressives, running Roosevelt as their candidate, took 27.4% of the popular vote and 16.6% of the electoral vote. That left the Republicans with a measly 1.5% of the electoral vote. The 1.5% was not just low; it was an embarrassment. Thus ended 16 years of Republican domination of the White House.

But the Republican’s Party’s death was greatly exaggerated. That was because the Progressive Party proved to be a ‘flash in the pan’ rather than a sustainable effort. Roosevelt was quick realize the weakness of his of splinter party. The leaders of his party were reformers, not political realists. As a result they spent their time and energy pushing for political reform not building Party organization. If party machinery could not be constructed, the Progressive Party was nothing more than ‘Roosevelt’s Party.’

By 1916, Roosevelt knew the Progressive Party was dead. It was not doing the basic work that was required to make a party viable. In other words, if a party cannot find the people to do the grunt work like raising money, registering voters, licking stamps and filling out mountains of required paperwork the party will not survive. Since Progressives were not interested in doing the grunt work, it was a dying party. When Roosevelt realized the truth, he left the Progressives and went back to the Republican Party. This imploded the Progressive Party. Now the Republican Party was coming back to life and the Progressives were dying.

Of critical important to this book, the man who ran as Vice President with Roosevelt on the Progressive ticket for President was Hiram Johnson. Johnson had skyrocketed to fame in California when he replaced Francis J. Heney as the chief prosecutor in the Graft Trials in San Francisco in 1908. Heney had been gunned down in open court so Johnson had to carry the entire weight of the trial on his own. He secured a conviction and was swept in to the California Governor’s mansion two years later.

Johnson was a liberal Republican, an oxymoron today. During his two years as Governor he established the popular election of United States Senators. This eliminated the state practice of letting the Legislature vote for who would be Senator. He also pushed for Women’s Suffrage and the three top reform issues of the era: initiative, referendum and recall. He was the Governor of California when he ran with Roosevelt on the Progressive Ticket in 1912 and was then re-elected as Governor in 1914. In 1916, he ran (successfully) for United States Senate on the Progressive Ticket.

What is important here is that with the death of the Progressive Party nationally, the Republican Party was coming back from the dead. Roosevelt was now a Republican, again, and his Vice Presidential candidate had been a Republican and would be again — he would run for President of the United States in 1920 but lose the nomination to Warren G. Harding. California was a strong Republican state. It had only gone for a non-Republican three times since the Civil War: 1880, 1892 and 1912, the last being when Roosevelt, a former Republican, ran with Hiram Johnson, a former Republican, on the Progressive ticket.

To put it mildly, the Republican Party both nationally and in California, was in disarray. But then again, the Progressive Party was in worse shape: it was dead. It had gone from a strong second in 1912 to a tombstone in four years. After Roosevelt left the Progressive to return to the Republican fold, there was a mass exodus behind him. Now, with the 1916 election approaching, the Republicans had to pull their party together.

In the months preceding the Republican National Convention a great concern was voiced within the party for a candidate who could comfortable represent both ‘kinds’ of Republicans; those who had stayed and those who had left but had come back. Not only that, the candidate had to be free of any links to the 1912 fiasco. As it happened, there was one man who fit the bill: Charles Evans Hughes. Because he had been the reforming governor of a large state, New York, he would make the Progressives happy. His support among conservatives seemed assured because he was on the United States Supreme Court at that time, hardly a bastion of liberalism. Of great importance, he had been out of politics in 1912 as he had been on the Supreme Court.

Soon after his nomination Hughes moved quickly to consolidate his support with both wings of the party. Meeting with William Howard Taft and Roosevelt — on separate occasions — he enlisted their support for what looked like an emerging Republican victory. Support from the established Republicans was assured with the support of Taft but Progressive support would be a bit trickier and it was here that Hughes made a misstep. Locked in traditional political thinking, he believed that receiving the endorsement of the ‘top’ of the political party meant loyalty all the way down to the ward workers at the bottom. This may have been true of the Republicans but not the Progressives. What Hughes failed to realize was that Progressivism was a grass roots movement that had precipitated national repercussion, not the other way around. Hughes was going to have to win the support of the Progressives on the local level, not the national level. His education was going to be expensive.

Not the Democrats were in any better shape. Domestic concerns that had been driving the party were now taking a back seat to international affairs. The storm clouds of war were gathering from coast to coast. As the war in Europe changed from the initial burst of patriotic frenzy to the protracted attrition of trench warfare, America founds itself being inexorably drawn toward the vortex. Though many Americans felt that American soldiers would eventually have to fight in Europe, President Wilson seemed reluctant to take a stand. His campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out Of War,” satisfied few Americans as pro-war sentiment began to grow.

As Hughes approached California on the Western swing of his campaign tour, the local political clouds were darkening as well. Though there was no national Progressive Party, the quasi-leader of what was left was California Governor Hiram Johnson. So the Progressives were alive and well in California. And since the Progressives were a potent force in the West, both the Republicans and the Democrats felt that wooing them was essential to victory. Stumbling forward, Hughes made a special effort to gain the support of Hiram Johnson under the mistaken impression that an endorsement from Johnson meant the Republicans would get the Progressive vote in California — all 283,610 of them. Taft, the bona fide Republican was only on the ballot as a write-in. He only picked up 3, 914 votes. Woodrow Wilson did well; but not well enough to beat the Progressives. He got 283,436. Hughes had to get the Progressive vote to win. But then again, so did the Democrats.

Hiram Johnson and Charles Evans Hughes had conferred after Hughes had been nominated but it had been a brief meeting. Johnson had assured Hughes of his support but that didn’t mean much to the rank-and-file Progressives. On July 8, 1916, it became imperative for Hughes to meet with Johnson again because Johnson was had filed to run for the United States Senate — as a Progressive — against a Republican! Hughes sent a quick wire to Johnson at the California Progressive Conference

The national aims to which we are devoted are so vitally important that I earnestly hope there may be that strong and effective cooperation which will assure their achievement. I desire a reunited Party as the essential agency of national progress, a Party drawing to itself the liberal sentiment of a quickened nation . . . We are not divided in our ideals; let us work together to attain them.

This might have been a good start but that’s all that it was. The Republican-Progressive coalition in California was more of a meeting of two prize fighters in the same ring rather than a love fest. There was going to be a tug-of-war. The old guard Republicans viewed the Progressives as upstarts who had gutted the Party for a useless exercise in political science which had resulted in more of a tantrum than a long shot with a dark horse. The Progressives, on the other hand, looked upon the old guard Republicans as the last gathering of the dinosaurs around the La Brea tar pit. For the Progressives, the new religion was ‘reform’ and it was being undermined in California by the ‘Big Business’ interests. On the West Coast those interests were specifically the Southern Pacific Railroad — and, secondarily, all railroads including United Railroads in San Francisco. Evil incarnate to the Progressives was William H. Crocker with his odious connection to the Southern Pacific machine. Crocker was also the Republican National Committeeman and one of the two men representing the Republican Party who were to meet and work out the details of the Hughes visit to California with the Progressives. In the ensuing effort to create an amiable San Francisco tour for Hughes, the Progressives were represented by Chester H. Rowell, Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Progressive National Chairman.

Since the Progressive Party was alive and well and strong in California and running an unbeatable candidate for the United States Senate — along with a bevy of local candidates — its representatives were not about to give the Republicans any satisfaction beyond coordination of the Hughes visit — and only that because no Progressive was running for the Presidency — this time around. The Republicans looked at the Progressives as a lively corpse, a zombie party, with whom they had to deal in 1916 but would have disappeared from the face of the earth by 1920. Complicating the matter even more, the California Republican Steering Committee had agreed to support Hiram Johnson against one of their own.

From the moment that the Republicans met with the Progressives, things got very nasty very fast. Rowell, representing the Progressives, wanted Hiram Johnson to introduce Hughes in San Francisco is the Republicans were supporting Johnson. Crocker said that he had not been informed that Republicans were supporting Johnson; he was supporting the Republicans running against Johnson. This took Rowell by surprise and he telegraphed the Hughes campaign manager and asked for a specific clarification: was the Republican Steering Committee supporting Johnson or not? Hughes campaign manager didn’t say ‘yes’ but he didn’t say ‘no’ either. That was the first nail in the coffin of the Hughes visit to San Francisco.

Now it was painfully evident that no agreement could be reached. The Progressives, Hughes supporters, then suggested that Hughes simply avoid California. Under the circumstances this was a reasonable idea but not realistic. California had half a million voters and a substantial chunk of electoral votes. Hughes could not act as if it didn’t exist. So he had to visit California even if his party and the Progressives were at war. Further, he could not delay his visit because he was only going to be in the Far West once. This was in the days when ‘high speed’ transportation meant a train. The California visit was ‘now or never,’ so Hughes had to visit California and San Francisco immediately.

Step-0by-step the old guard Republicans cut the Progressives out of any participation the Hughes visit. By the end of July the Progressives were completely out of the loop as the Republicans prepared to the make the most of the political patronage they expected from a Hughes visit. The Republicans were so focused on their own interests that when the Hughes campaign asked that Hiram Johnson introduce Hughes in either San Francisco or Los Angeles, the old guard balked.

Up until this moment the Hughes campaign had been blindly hopeful that things would ‘work out all right.’ At the 11th hour, when it was crystal clear that the California Progressives and Republicans would rather die that work together, the campaign tried to salvage the imploding California campaign. To this end the Hughes campaign asked both parties to meet with Hughes in Portland on August 16, three days before Hughes was to be in San Francisco:

Have telegram from Manager of Hughes’ train which suggests you [Crocker] and Rowell meet train in Portland on Wednesday, August sixteenth, and travel with Governor Hughes to San Francisco and to withhold final arrangements about Chairman until then, unless you have come to an agreement.

The devil is in the details but the kiss of death is in the wording. There was only one thing wrong with the telegram: the last seven words. As far as Crocker was concerned there was an agreement. The problem was that the agreement was only in his mind and the Progressives were not part of the agreement he imagined. As far as he was concerned the Progressives were not part of the Hughes campaign tour. So he shot back a telegram, “Replying to your telegram today, all arrangements for California have been completed.”

This came as a shock to Rowell, though not an unexpected one. He protested to the Hughes campaign. In desperation, the Hughes campaign called both Crocker and Rowell to a conference on the train. Rowell got to the train first and passionately urged Hughes to give Johnson lots of credit in California. After all, Johnson was the most popular man in California and was the hands-down favorite to win the Senate seat. If both men won they would be dealing with each other for years in Washington D.C. So it made sense to start the relationship off cordially.

The response from Hughes startled Rowell. Hughes said he wanted to stay aloof from the Republican-Progressive split in California. That was local politics. Rowell was shocked at Hughes’ naiveté. Later, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, Rowell wrote that if Hughes actually unaware of the explosive situation in California “he was the only person on the train” who didn’t know what was going to happen when he got to the Golden State.

Crocker boarded the train in Gerber, Oregon. But he did not meet with Hughes first. That meeting was with Frederick M. Davenport, a close friend of Hughes. Crocker was emphatic that Hughes be kept as far away from Johnson as possible. It was Crocker’s personal contention that Hiram Johnson did not have much of chance against a unified party — assuming, in his mind, that the party was unified and that unification was around the traditional Republican Party; which it was not. Further, if Hughes appeared to be backing Johnson, it would bode ill for Republicans further down the ticket. There is no indication that Hughes disputed this claim. The upshot of the meeting was that the entire Hughes’ visit to California was going to be left in the hands of the old guard Republicans. The Progressives were out in the cold.

Then the disaster got worse. By acquiescing to the demands of the old guard Republicans, Hughes was stuck with their arrangements. As a result the San Francisco rally was a Progressive disaster. Crocker introduced Hughes without a word about the Progressives or Rowell who was on stage with Hughes and Crocker. At the very least it was not a good idea to snub, in public, the editor of one of the most powerful newspapers in California. Hughes, “still hoping that he could ride through California with one foot on the back of the Elephant and other on the back of a Bull Moose,” attempted to make his position clear:

I come as a spokesman of a reunited Republic Party to talk to you of national issues — with local differences I no concern.[i]

Unfortunately Hughes had neglected to remember the old adage that ‘all politics is local.’ For the Progressives the Hughes statement was basically a disenfranchisement. In one sentences he was consigning the Progressive party to the dust heap of history. There may have been a shred of truth to that but there was not a shred of proof that Hiram Johnson was going to lose the race for United States Senate. He was popular Progressive in America and the sitting Governor of California. With Hughes not even giving a nod to the Progressives, it sounded as though he was endorsing the Republican candidate for the United States Senate, not Johnson. And this was after the Republican Steering Committee had told Johnson that he was going to get their endorsement! For the California Progressives it was clear that the Republican Party had absolutely no idea what it was doing.

The next day Rowell resigned from the Hughes entourage stating that his wife was about to undergo surgery. His vacancy was not filled.

In all fairness, August of 1916 was not a good month for politicians. With less than three months to go before the people of the United States cast their ballots, both candidates suddenly found themselves involved in controversy. In Washington D. C., Woodrow Wilson was desperately trying to stave off a nationwide railroad strike. After a series of communications between the two parties, Wilson met with 31 railroad presidents on August 18, the day Charles Evans Hughes was in San Francisco. But the railroad presidents were unmoved. So were the unions when they met with the President 72 hours later. After six more days of fruitless negotiations Wilson decided to press for a settlement through Congress. After a rancorous fight in the House and Senate, a bill was hammered out that established the eight-hour day. The new law as the Adamson Act named after the man who had shepherded it through Congress.

But the passage of the bill had been very, very close. It had been so close that Wilson had expected it to fail. If it had failed, there would have been a nationwide railway strike. Anticipating the worst, Wilson had recalled 150,000 troops from the Mexican border because he anticipated a breakdown of law and order. Hughes denounced the bill as a campaign gift to the unions. This was not a particularly wise move since San Francisco was a union town and the two violent strikes still active when Hughes visited San Francisco were over the eight-hour day.

Hughes’ 48 hours in San Francisco were fumble, bumble and tumble. Being a guest of the Republican Party in California — and for “Republican” read “old guard Republicans” — he was bound by their itinerary. This was the fatal factor in Hughes’ entire campaign. Though the Republicans knew that San Francisco was in midst of a violent culinary strike they made no attempt to shied Hughes from the adverse publicity. To the contrary, it seems that they forced to Hughes to become involved in the conflict by dining at a struck restaurant, the San Francisco Commercial Club.

Hughes had been agonizing over this luncheon for more than a week. In Portland he had been advised to cancel the banquet rather than run the risk of offending the San Francisco labor unions. This was good advice considering how many union votes there were in San Francisco. But Hughes, astonishingly, rejected this advice and stated he would attend the luncheon because he did not want his opponents to insinuate that he “lacked courage” in a difficult situation.

Courage, however, is not a substitute for common sense. It was a dangerous move. Discretion being the better part of valor, it would have been far safer for Hughes have become conveniently ill. But he chose no such course. What he did try to do was defuse the situation as best as he could.

As soon as Hughes arrived in San Francisco he sent his personal manager, Charles Farnham, to talk with Hugo Ernst, President of the striking Cooks and Waiters Union. It was not a pleasant meeting and the delicacy of the situation did not impress Ernst. He responded that the Commercial Club had “insulted organized labor” in San Francisco by forcing the issue of the open shop. Further, Ernst has only recently issued a public statement in the San Francisco Bulletin demanding that Hughes repudiate the open shop campaign of the Law and Order Committee. Ernst could have cared less about how Hughes was treated in San Francisco — — but he was a realist. There was a good chance that Hughes would win and it would be a better idea to cut a deal with his campaign than appear as an out-and-out enemy. So Ernst suggested a deal. He would delay his strike of the Commercial Club and Hughes would be served by union men as long as the open shop plaque in the window of the Commercial Club was removed “while our men are serving the luncheon.”

It was a good compromise but it left the next move to the San Francisco Commercial Club.

Why the plaque was not removed has not been recorded. It can be safely assumed that the Commercial Club conferred with the Law and Order Committee. The Committee undoubtedly realized that with Hughes in San Francisco there would be nationwide publicity for the open shop campaign which, in turn, could turn the open shop into a nationwide campaign. After all, hadn’t the Adamson Act barely passed the United States Congress and was even then on its way to the United States Supreme Court? [The Act would be upheld by the Supreme Court, Wilson v. New 243 U.S. 332 the next year.] Not only would the publicity insure support for the open shop in San Francisco but it would make the Committee celebrity with other management groups across the United States.

Further, since the Law and Order Committee was considering sending representatives to Sacramento to carry the campaign onto the state level, the Hughes’ publicity would be an excellent springboard to launch the new, statewide campaign. And, moreover, quite confident that Hughes would win the election without San Francisco, it was probably decided that the plaque should stay. The Commercial Club acquiesced and the plaque remained in the window.

The news hit the Hughes’ campaign like an incoming mortar shell. At this point Farnham became desperate. When he as the old guard Republicans in San Francisco to move the banquet to another location he was told it was too late since all the arrangements had been made. When Farnham asked Crocker, personally, to have the open shop plaque removed, Crocker, who was a member of the Club, “shrugged his shoulders and said he could do nothing.” It appeared that the local Republicans were more interested in winning a minor skirmish than the Presidency of the United States.[ii]

Despite the Hughes to play down the significance of the banquet at the Commercial Club, it was an unmitigated disaster. There was an inflamed protest by the labor community — not just the culinary workers. When the plaque was not removed from the window Ernst refused to allow his cooks and waiters to serve the luncheon. In a letter to the Commercial Club Ernst made the situation for Hughes worse by stating that since Hughes was not going to publically state his support for the closed shop, he was an enemy of labor.

The Waiter’s Union has received an order for sixty-five union men to serve the luncheon this afternoon.

We thank you very much for your consideration in allowing our membership a chance to earn a few dollars; but inasmuch as you have organized your place with an open shop card at the request of the Restaurant men’s Association, with whom you have no logical affiliation,[1] we are forced to prohibit our members from serving at said Hughes luncheon.

Had Mr. Hughes taken advantage of the opportunity afforded him to make a statement on his attitude of the open shop question which is agitating organized labor at this time and had he declared himself for the closed shop, we would not be forced to take this drastic action.

We are sorry that this concerns one of the best known Americans. We are sorry to be forced to do this thing but the Commercial Club, its officers and members must suffer the responsibility for their unrighteous war upon the workers connected with our industry.[iii]

The next day the labor press skewered Hughes as the enemy of the closed shop, a supporter of the open shop and a cohort of the Law and Order Committee. The coverage made a mockery of what he had said less than 24 hours previously. With a single meal had labeled himself as a supporter of the open shop campaign not only in San Francisco but across the nation.

The bad press did not seem to concern either the local business community or the national Republican leadership. In their mind the incident was unfortunate but not fatal. Wall Street was still betting on Charles Evans Hughes as the next President of the United States. Locally the sentiment of the San Francisco business community can best be summed up by quoting a letter by Rudolph Spreckles of Spreckles Sugar to James D. Phelan, Democratic Senator from California and a personal friend. Spreckles asked Phelan to “telegraph me if you [want to bet] a $2,500 against $4,000 on Hughes.”[iv] Even the San Francisco Chronicle seemed to concede that Hughes had the election in the bag. On August 20, the day after the fiasco at the Commercial Club, the paper printed a story entitled “Hughes Leaves San Francisco with Fall Ballot Won.”

The Argonaut felt emboldened enough to lambaste the unions for their walkout at the banquet. In the August 16 issue, the first edition of the weekly to appear after the Hughes luncheon, the Argonaut published a stinging tirade of the unions. The press insisted that the walkout of the culinary workers was characteristic of the

Shamelessness of that species of unionism under which San Francisco had long suffered, and which had been a blight, not less upon [an Francisco’s] dignity than upon our prosperity.

Though the San Francisco visit may have been the fatal episode in the Hughes campaign, it must be remembered that the San Francisco fiasco was an alienation of the union sentiment and not necessarily Progressive sentiment. It also seems as though Hughes had been destined to alienate the unions. If that was his fate he shouldered it willingly. In terms of the labor vote, the Commercial Club luncheon was only one step of many down the wrong road. Hughes continued to stir resentment when he attacked the Adamson Act as a ‘shocking abandonment of principle” and continued to snipe at the eight-hour day throughout the rest of his campaign.

As if the San Francisco visit had not been bad enough, Hughes managed one more major gaffe, this time in Long Beach. By coincidence both Hughes and Johnson were in the same hotel on the same day. Hughes claimed he did not know that Johnson was in the Hotel. Johnson did not want to be a publicity hog so he did nothing about it. As Hughes was going to a Republican gathering and Johnson to a Progressive meeting, the men would not have had the chance to a casual meeting. So they did not meet. When Hughes discovered his error he sent Farnham to Johnson with an apology. Why he did not make the apology personal on the telephone is not known. Late that night as he was leaving Long Beach, Hughes told a close personal friend, “If I had known Johnson was in that hotel, I would have seen if I had to kick the door down.”

The ironic epitaph to the Hughes visit to California was that the race was much closer than anyone had imagined. Though Wall Street continued to bank on Hughes, by the early morning hours of the day after the election it was clear that the Hughes tide had begun to ebb. California, in 1916, like Florida, in 2000, became the key state. It was, winner take all. When all of the votes had been counted, the Republicans — and the Law and Order Committee — must have looked at the statistics in horror. The state had been lost by a mere 3,775 votes. But San Francisco had gone for Woodrow Wilson by 15,000 votes. And Johnson had won on the Progressive ticket by more than 300,000 votes. Southern California may have given Hughes strong support, a plurality of over 40,000 votes, but the former Progressive stronghold and union-rich city of San Francisco had abandoned him.

Undoubtedly the impact of the Hughes luncheon had added to the general disenchantment of Californians in general and San Franciscans in particular. But while the snub of Governor Hiram Johnson was not known to a large number of people, the luncheon at the Commercial Club was given front page coverage in a union town. Thus the key to the Hughes loss was San Francisco. Hughes committed the one unforgivable sin which haunts every politician seeking higher office: he became embroiled in a local issue. His attendance at the Commercial Club was obtrusive proof of his enmity to labor. His apparent ties with the Law and Order Committee gave him the odious smell of corruption. Though Hughes was later to claim that he had lost the Presidency of the United States because he had failed to shake hands with the Governor California, it is far more likely that he kicked away that office when he sat down to dine at the commercial club on August 19, 1916.

[1] The Commercial Club was not strictly a restaurant. When it served a luncheon it had to send out for cooks, waiters and food.

[i] “Hughes Talks of National Issue to Large Throng,” San Francisco Bulletin, Augusts 19, 1916.

[ii] The Hughes disaster in California has been covered by many responsible historians. The best sources, and from

where many of the quotes in this chapter come, are Spencer C. Olin, Jr., CALIFORNIA’S PRODIGAL SONS, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968) and Merlo J. Pusey, CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, (New York: Macmillan press, 1951.)

[iii] “All Waiters Quit, but the Hughes Luncheon Is Success,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 20, 1916.

[iv] Phelan papers, September 20, 1916, quoted by permission of the Bancroft Library, University of California

Berkeley.

[Steven Levi’s mysteries can be found at www.authormasterminds.com. His other books are available from Kindle and ACX.]