“A True Revival of Religion”: Protestants and the San Francisco Graft Prosecutions, 1906–1909

Abstract

Almost a year after the great earthquake and fire of April 1906, San Francisco clergyman William Rader declared, “We are having a true revival of religion.” Writing in the San Francisco-based Congregationalist weeklyPacific, Rader was not referring to the visit of a mass evangelist; rather, he meant the graft prosecutions officially launched in October 1906 against the Union Labor party administration of the city. He compared Rudolph Spreckels, a reform-minded member of the city's financial elite who was helping to fund the prosecution, and Francis J. Heney, the lead prosecuting attorney, to the late-nineteenth-century revival team of Dwight L. Moody and Ira D. Sankey. “God is moving the city,” Rader asserted, “and when a number of our Supervisors and other officials are sent to prison we will be more free…. Thank God the Christ spirit is not dead; it lives.”