Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909

by Franklin Hichborn

Curtin is put down as doubtful because, justly or unjustly, he was at the opening of the session so regarded. But Curtin's record shows that generally speaking from the beginning to the end of the session he voted with the anti-machine element. Had the anti-machine forces made a determined effort to organize the Senate and demonstrated a strength of twenty-one votes, which would have been enough to organize,. Curtin would certainly have been with them. The same is true of Welch, and it is probably true of Price. This would have given the anti-machine forces from twenty-two to twenty-four votes, a safe margin to have permitted them to organize the Senate to carry out anti-machine policies.

The machine claquers will no doubt point gleefully to the fact that when the test on the Railroad Regulation bills came, Anthony, Burnett, Estudillo, Hurd and Walker strayed from the anti-machine fold. This objection would have more weight had there ever been an anti-machine fold. As a matter of fact, the anti-machine element in the Senate from the day the session opened until it closed was unorganized, and without leaders or detailed plan of action.

Admittedly Estudillo and Burnett strayed on the railroad regulation question, but they did so believing the absolute rate provided in the Stetson bill to be unconstitutional. All this will be brought out in the chapters on railroad regulation measures, but in passing, it may be said that Burnett, in the closing hours of the session, stated on the floor of the Senate that he had voted against the Stetson bill and for the Wright bill on the understanding that a constitutional amendment would be passed setting at rest all question of the constitutionality of the absolute rate. The machine leaders misled Senator Burnett. Machine votes defeated the amendment.

Anthony, Estudillo and Walker stood out against the machine in the direct primary fight which followed the defeat of the Stetson bill, and before the fight was over, Burnett had returned to the anti-machine forces.

The case of Senator Hurd is not at all creditable to the machine. But Hurd's instincts and sympathies are not those of Gus Hartman, Hare, Wolfe and Leavitt. Had the anti-machine forces had even semblance of organization there would have been no straying, and the accomplishment of the legislative session of 1909 would have been more satisfactory to the best citizenship of the State.

The fact that the anti-machine forces, without leaders and without organization, stuck together so well as they did is one of the most extraordinary and at the same time encouraging features of the session.

Although the anti-machine forces numbered a majority of the Senate, nevertheless a bare majority of the regular Republican Senators - those who were eligible to admittance to the Republican caucus - were with the machine. The division in the Republican caucus, counting Welch and Price with the machine element, was on machine and anti-machine lines as follows:

Anti-machine - Anthony, Birdsall, Black, Boynton, Burnett, Cutten, Estudillo, Hurd, Roseberry, Rush, Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson, Walker - 14.

Machine - Bates, Pills, Finn, Hartman, Leavitt, Lewis, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage, Weed, Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 16.

By time-honored custom it has become a rule for the majority[5a] in the Senate - and the same holds in the Assembly - to meet in caucus to decide upon the details of organization. This is done on the theory that the House should be so organized as to permit the majority to carry out its policies as expeditiously and with as little friction as possible. By the unwritten rule of the caucus, the majority governs and each member who attends the caucus is bound in honor to vote - regardless of his individual views or wishes - on the floor of the Senate or Assembly, as the majority of the caucus decides. Thus, by going into caucus with the sixteen machine Senators, the fourteen anti-machine Senators were placed in a position where they were, under caucus rule, compelled to vote on the floor of the Senate as the sixteen machine Senators dictated. This gave the machine on the floor of the Senate thirty votes out of forty on questions affecting organization, and permitted it to name the President pro tem., the Secretary of the Senate, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and gave it filial voice in the appointment of the various attaches.