The proposed rules would have enabled the machine forces to smother in committee any measure the machine wished to defeat. A two-thirds vote would have been necessary to suspend the rules to have a bill recalled from committee, that is to say, the votes of fifty-four Assemblymen. Twenty-seven Assemblymen could then have held the measure in committee until the session closed.
Had the committee-prepared rules been adopted, the probabilities are that the battleground of the session would have been transferred from the Senate Chamber to the Assembly.
But the proposed rules were not adopted. A fight against adopting the committee's report was started by Drew of Fresno. Mr. Drew introduced a resolution rejecting the rules submitted by the committee, and substituting the rules of 1907, to govern the session of 1909. Johnson of Sacramento led the defense that rallied to the committee's report. But Johnson's wit failed against the argument which Drew, Callan, Preston, Young and Cattell offered. The gentlemen denounced the rules which the committee had offered as "vicious, despotic and gagging." Drew's resolution was adopted by a vote of 41 to 32, the committee's report rejected and the rules of 1907 accepted for the session of 1909[12]. It was a decided victory for the anti-machine forces, and brought gloom to the scheming machine leaders. But it developed later that not a few who had voted for the Drew resolution were safely machine; while many who had voted against it were anti-machine, but had voted against the resolution under misapprehension of just what it stood for[13].
Although the reform majority in the Assembly could prevent the adoption of the "gag rules," it could not, after it had failed to elect the Speaker, govern the appointment of the committees. By and large, the Assembly committees were controlled as were the Senate committees by machine standbys. The Election Laws Committee, which was to pass upon the Direct Primary bill, was safely in machine hands. Grove L. Johnson, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, herded the young lawyers thereon like so many sheep. Johnson was in effect the committee.
The Committee on Corporations and the Committee on Common Carriers, before which railroad regulation bills might come, were safely in majority for the machine.
One apparent exception to the rule was the Committee on Public Morals, which gave the Anti-Gambling bill its start toward passage. But this committee, which did so much to secure the passage of the Anti-Gambling bill, held up the Local Option bill at Speaker Stanton's request, until the last week of the session, thus making its passage in the Assembly impossible.
A curious mistake was made by the machine, when Telfer of San Jose was made Chairman of the Committee on Contingent Expenses. Telfer is not only anti-machine, but possessed of a non-political honesty which proved very distressing to the machine before the session was over.
Telfer as Chairman of the committee refused to "O. K." extravagant charges for the materials furnished the Assembly. As a result, bills for hire of typewriters had to be reduced, pencils counted and other astonishing reductions made.
Telfer saved the State several hundred dollars, but caused many a heartache. Telfer's appointment to a committee which he made important, shows that the machine element as well as the anti-machine sometimes makes mistakes. But in spite of its minor mistakes, in spite of the anti-machine majority, so admirably did the machine organize the Assembly for its purposes, that in the closing days of the session not only were vicious measures passed without much difficulty, but the Assembly was made the graveyard of good bills[14].
[11] If ever the People of California secure control of the State Legislature through machine-free representatives with the courage to dare and the ability to do, one of the most important pieces of work will be to sweep aside the mass of precedent which the machine has for years been gradually embodying into the rules of Senate and Assembly. What is needed is a set of rules that shall promote the expression of the wishes of the majority. The curse of technicality does not hamper the Judiciary alone; it hampers the legislative branch of government as well. Note Wolfe's ability to deadlock the Senate after the Assembly Amendments to the Direct Primary bill had been rejected. Chapter XI.