The San Francisco call., 1898-01-28


 of four to three the Los Angeles City Board of Education tonight adopted the resolution given herewith and thereby ended all proceedings against Walter L. Webb.
 This restores MT. Webb to his full powers as @ member of the Board of Education. It is an exOneration from the charges of bribery that were brought against him and prosecuted by the League for Better City Govern ment. It shows those charges to have been brought without good cause and leaves 1t an open question as to the mo- tive that inspired the prosecution. Were it not for the seriousness of the affair, so far as concerns the man placed under fire all these many weeks, the whole proceeding before the Board Of Education was nothing less than farce, more particularly since the for 3lla4 and prompt &.:quittaI Of Webb be- fore the Superior Court.
 On the call of the roll Poor, Bartlett. Mathis and McInerny voted aye, and Conroy. Davis and Braly voted no. Kubach was absent, and Webb of course refrained from voting. An an- alysis of this vote shows that the three men who voted against the adoption of the resolution are members of the League for Better City Government. Two of these. Chairman Davis of the board and Director Conroy, are attOr- neys, who. by reason of their education and training, should have a true and clear conception of the value of testi mony. Yet in the face of the fact, pa tent to everybody who attended the sessions of the board during this in vestigation. that no scrap of testimony against Webb was brought to light, ex- cept that given by AxtelI and Adams, self-confessed perjurers. these two members voted against the resolution.
 Braly, who cast the third vote against it. is now under investigation, and according to a rule adopted by the board on December ', 1897, he should not have been permitted to vote. This rule reads as follows: No member of the board resting under charges shall be permitted to vote upon any ques- ton arising during or connected with the examination of said charges"
 When the board adjourned, almost Immediately after the adoption of the resolution, Webbs friends crowded about him to offer their congratulations. while his erstwhile prosecutors, Attor- ney Thomas E. Gibbon and Pastor Burt Estes Howard in particular, fumed, foamed and frothed at the re- suit of their desperate and despicable attempt to ruin the accused for reasons already stated in these columns.
 When the result of the vote was an- nounced the serpents, who train with the Jekyll-Hyde leaders of the League for Better City Government, giving way to their natural instincts and hab- It's, hissed.
 The finale in the Webb proceedings was not reached tonight without dis plays of the most intense animosity on the part of the prosecution, which took it's defeat with ilI-concealed chagrin.
 There was also sore disappointment for the syndicated Times Herald -Ex- press in the action of the Board of Education tonight. With their one syndicated voice they declared at the time Davis was elected chairman of the board that the power of Webb in that body had been broken. Admitting that they were correct in this, they must now admit, if they wish to avoid stul- tifying themselves. that Webb was fairly and fully acquitted by the vote of the board tonight.
 In closing the case for the prosecu- tion, when the" session of the board be- gan, Attorney Oliver proceeded to read part of the testimony given by Adams in the Superior Court, all of Adams testimony having been admitted in this investigation. The portion read by Oliver was the crossh hexamination of Adams by Attorney E. A. Meserve, in part as follows:
 Adams-I understood MT. Webb to say that he received 1t from Mir Axtell-s60 of the Cooper money. Now, if I am wrong, God Almighty knows I would not try to convict any living person, and don't nor have done it in ali my life. If l tell a lie, 1t isn't because I want to- It isn't my motive. but 1t is because have been sick and III and have been per- suaded, first by one man and then by another-the City Government League and then another league-and have been under the doctors care for three or four