The Chronicle’s front page of Jan. 26, 1917, screamed: “ ‘What of Us?’ Ask Magdalenes Who Crowd Church.”

Beneath the headline, readers were treated to exhaustive coverage of one of the most dramatic confrontations in San Francisco history. Stirred into action by a minister’s campaign to rid the city of prostitution, and aided by a sympathetic newspaper editor, 300 San Francisco whores marched to the reverend’s church and demanded that he explain how they were to live if their profession was taken from them.

“Women of the underworld, 300 strong, bedecked, their eyebrows penciled and their lips rouged, descended en masse yesterday upon Central Methodist Church and its pastor, Rev. Paul Smith, one of the authors of the crusade against open vice in San Francisco,” The Chronicle reported. “They went to tell their side of the story — the problem as it is looked upon by the women of the night life.”

The women’s leader, a prominent madam named Reggie Gamble, had called Smith earlier that morning to let him know that “a few” women wanted to meet with him. He agreed — and was stunned when 300 appeared. He opened his church and they poured in.

Before letting the women speak, the discomfited Smith tried to pour oil on the waters. “This crusade, I want it understood, is not directed against you women,” he said. “It is directed against the system of which you are some of the victims. ... This is a man-problem.”

But Smith made it clear that he was not prepared to forgive the sinners unless they repented and sinned no more. “The Christian attitude toward prostitution is not one of toleration, except as those who lead a life of shame show a sincere desire to reform.”

Gamble then stood up. She trembled, but her voice was calm as she delivered her speech, co-written by two female staffers of Fremont Older’s San Francisco Bulletin newspaper at the editor’s direction.

Making a living

She acknowledged that it would be desirable to cut down or even eliminate commercialized vice, if that were possible, but asked Smith what was to become of the “hundreds and thousands of women in San Francisco who make their living in the underworld.” She said women took up prostitution only because they could not make a decent living any other way, and she pressed Smith on whether members of his congregation would be prepared to take prostitutes into their homes.

“You don’t want women such as us around your church, do you?” she said caustically. “You want to keep your church clean. You won’t do anything to stop vice by driving us women out of this city to some other city. Has your city and your church a different God, that you drive evil away from your city and your church to other cities and other churches?”

More money

The beleaguered Smith asked the women if a $10-a-week wage would be sufficient to get them to quit prostitution. When most answered that they would need $20 or $25, Smith replied that was unrealistic. When he asked how many would be willing to do housework, one woman answered, “What woman wants to work in a kitchen?” as the crowd laughed.

“Towards the close of the meeting, which lasted some three-quarters of an hour, a spirit of restlessness began to make itself manifest,” The Chronicle reported. Women in the crowd began to break in more frequently. One thin, pale woman said, “Let us understand each other. Are you trying to reform us or are you trying to reform social conditions? You leave us alone. It is too late to do anything with us. Give your attentions to the boys and girls in the schools and to the social conditions responsible for the spread of prostitution.”

A woman from the audience called out, “We want to be left alone.” The crowd applauded.

Another woman asked, “What ship are you going to send us away on?” There was more applause.

Smith hastily adjourned the meeting, telling The Chronicle later that he did so because it “began to be impassioned.”

A large crowd had gathered outside the church. The women left, eyed by curious onlookers. “Some of the women hid their faces; others did not,” The Chronicle reported. “Slowly they wended their way back from whence they came. And one of the strangest gatherings that ever took place in San Francisco, or any other town or city for that matter, was at an end.”

The great prostitutes’ march failed to change Smith’s mind, or to alter city policy. That very afternoon, Smith convened an anti-vice rally at the Dreamland Rink and blasted Mayor “Sunny Jim” Rolph for not cracking down on prostitution.

Crackdown launched

Within days, police began raiding houses in the Uptown Tenderloin. The city’s 69-year-long era of tolerated vice was over.

After Gamble’s speech, Smith had said, “I don’t know that I have ever been sadder in my life than I am right now. You have asked the same questions that have been asked ever since the world began and are still unanswered. I cannot answer them.”

But Smith now hit upon an answer: Have the prostitutes toil on a state work farm. This solution was not adopted.

Flush with his victory in San Francisco, Smith decided to spread the word nationally by making a movie. His 1918 film “The Finger of Justice” — possibly the worst film title in history — featured fake Barbary Coast dives and ersatz Uptown Tenderloin whorehouses and starred matinee idol Crane Wilbur as a jut-jawed “fighting parson.”

Going Hollywood

After the film had a successful three-week run in San Francisco, Smith divined a brighter future for his preaching on the silver screen. He took a leave from the ministry, organized a motion-picture company and took “The Finger of Justice” on a national tour. In a fundraising letter to his fellow Methodists published in the Christian Advocate, Smith gushed, “Almost unconsciously, we have fashioned here an instrument of preaching incomparable in its power to reach millions who never enter a church.”

But Smith overestimated the power of his instrument. Both New York and Philadelphia gave the finger to “The Finger of Justice” — the former banning it as immoral, the latter actually issuing a warrant for Smith’s arrest. As Curt Gentry writes in “The Madams of San Francisco,” “Smith had often preached that prostitutes were the downfall of good men, little realizing that he would be one of the victims.”

Smith formally left the ministry in 1922. When his movie company tanked, he moved to Los Angeles and became a car salesman. He later admitted that his anti-vice crusade might have been too heavy-handed.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the 2013 Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: metro@sfchronicle.com

Trivia time

Last week’s trivia question: What was Warriors legend Rick Barry’s highest-scoring NBA game?

Answer: 64 points, against the Portland Trail Blazers on March 26, 1974. (The Warriors won, 143-120.)

This week’s trivia question: What was the Gold Rush-era hotel the What Cheer famous for?

Editor’s note