(1) The minority, made up of the out and out machine Republicans and Democrats, who were prepared to pass a measure which under the name railroad regulation would leave the railroads practically independent of effective State supervision.
(2) The majority, which stood for the passage of an effective law.
The minority had the best captains in the Senate and was backed by the machine lobby made up principally of Southern Pacific attorneys.
The majority was poor in generals. But it had the backing of the shippers of - the State, who sent able counsel to Sacramento to present the shippers' side.
And in the end the machine minority wore out and defeated the majority. A comparatively effective railroad regulation bill was rejected and an ineffective measure passed.
Three railroad regulation measures were introduced in the Senate, their authors being Campbell, Stetson, and Wright.
The Campbell bill had much to commend it, but was rejected without much consideration by either side. Campbell was not in the program of either railroad or shippers. But before the session was over Campbell had made himself felt. He had, too, introduced a Constitutional Amendment for the correction of railroad abuses, which was to figure later on, but his bill was scarcely considered. The attorney for the shippers, in speaking before the Senate Committee on Corporations, confessed that he had not read the Campbell bill.
The attorney for the Southern Pacific Company, however, attempted to split the anti-machine forces by praising the Campbell bill, and setting the anti-machine Senators to disputing over the relative merits of the Campbell and Stetson bills. But nothing came of this graceful little coup. Campbell and his followers were too sensible to be caught by any such trickery. They gave their loyal support to the Stetson bill, and the Campbell bill was allowed to die in the Senate Judiciary Committee. This narrowed the fight down to the Stetson bill and the Wright bill.
The Stetson bill had been prepared in the office of Attorney General Webb, and at the instigation of Governor Gillett. As originally introduced it contained certain defects, which were afterwards corrected, but such Senators as Cutten, Caminetti, Black, Campbell, Miller, Cartwright, Bell and Thompson, admitted that the measure could be made the basis of as effective a law as could be prepared under the present constitutional provisions for the regulation of transportation companies.
The original measure was particularly weak in the section providing for demurrage charges. This was finally corrected by the passage of a separate reciprocal demurrage bill, which had been introduced by Miller. Another weakness in the Stetson bill as originally introduced was that the Railroad Commission was made a sort of barrier between the Courts and those who had grievances against the transportation companies. This objection was corrected by amendments.