Sacramento Cal Mch 20-09
Hon. Marshall Black,
Palo Alto, Cal.
Your bill to issue bonds for general improvement fund before me. I would like to have you here to explain its provisions and the necessity for it. 12-50Pm J. N. GILLETT.
Chapter XI.
Machine Amends Direct Primary Bill[57].
By Trick Prevents Senate From Concurring in Amendments to Correct Clerical and Typographical Errors, Thus Creating a Situation Which Threw the Measure Into a Committee on Free Conference With Power to Amend.
It is a very good rule to be sure that your rattlesnake is dead before placing yourself in a position to be bitten. The reform Senators neglected this rule, with the result that after they had the machine element whipped on the direct primary issue, they placed themselves in a position where the "performers" struck at them viciously, and snatched victory from them.
As was shown in a previous chapter, the Direct Primary bill, after it had originally passed the Senate in the face of machine opposition, was allowed to go to the Assembly containing several serious clerical and typographical errors. The Assembly corrected these errors by a series of ten amendments. It was necessary for the Senate to concur in these amendments to get the bill into proper form. The amendments added in the Assembly to which the anti-machine Senators took exception, were seven in number and dealt principally with the changing of the method of electing United States Senators, from the plan of State-wide vote, to that of district, advisory vote. The seven were known as the "vicious amendments"; the ten correcting the typographical errors were called the "necessary amendments." There is no good reason why the ten necessary amendments should not have been made before the bill was first sent to the Assembly. But they were not, and the errors which were thus left in the bill served the machine most advantageously when the final fight came. After Wolfe had given up hope of compelling the reform Senators to concur in the vicious amendments read into the bill in the Assembly, his play was to bring about a situation by which the bill would be thrown into a Committee on Free Conference. The committee would be appointed by President Porter of the Senate, and by Speaker Stanton of the Assembly. Such a committee would, of course, be in sympathy with machine policies, and could be counted upon to amend the bill to the machine's liking. There is little doubt that the machine leaders in the Senate and the machine leaders in the Assembly acted in conjunction in the proceedings which followed Senator Wolfe's action in abandoning his efforts to force the anti-machine Senators to support the so called vicious Assembly amendments.
Wolfe's first move was to ask as a matter of courtesy that the Senate adopt his motion to reconsider the vote by which it had the week before refused to concur in the Assembly amendment. This request the reform element granted, purely as a matter of courtesy. Wolfe then edged up a step nearer.
No sooner had he received the courtesy of reconsideration than both he and Leavitt were to the fore with a suggestion that the Senate should refuse to concur in all the amendments and let them be threshed out in the Assembly. The purpose of the two machine leaders was apparent.