Against substituting the Stetson bill for the Wright bill - Anthony,
Bates, Bills, Burnett, Estudillo, Finn, Hare, Hartman, Hurd, Kennedy,
Leavitt, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage, Walker, Weed,
Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 22.
Senators Roseberry and Rush were absent from the room when the vote was taken but both were for the Stetson bill, which would have made the vote 22 to 18 in favor of the Wright bill.
The twenty Senators whose names are printed in Italics are the twenty who voted with Leavitt and Wolfe to maintain the deadlock on the Direct Primary bill that the measure might be so amended that the electors of California would be denied a practical, State-wide vote for United States Senators. But one of the twenty, Lewis, voted for the Stetson bill, while nineteen of them voted for the Wright bill.
On the other hand, only three of the Senators, Estudillo, Anthony and Walker, who stood out for an honest Direct Primary law, voted against the Stetson bill and for the Wright bill. Walker had supported the Stetson bill in the Committee on Corporations, but stumbled into the machine ranks when it came to final vote. Had the anti-machine had an organization, such as the machine Democrats and Republicans maintained, Walker's blunder could have been prevented. Probably, too, Estudillo and Anthony would have remained with the anti-machine forces[65]. This would have given the Stetson bill twenty-one votes, and assured its passage.
Another vote that should have been saved to the reformers was that of Burnett. Burnett was clearly tricked into voting for the Wright bill. When the Stetson bill received the favorable recommendation of the Senate Judiciary Committee, machine claquers filled the air with the indefinite promise that in the event of the Wright bill becoming a law, a constitutional amendment would be adopted, by which all ambiguity in the State Constitution on the question of maximum and absolute rates would be removed. The amendment was then pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which finally reported it favorably.
After the Wright bill had been passed, the amendment was defeated by machine votes, as will be shown in the next chapter.
In the closing days of the session, when Burnett was urging that steps be taken for investigation into the increase of freight rates, he called attention to the fate of that railroad-regulation amendment.
"I was led to vote as I did for the Railroad Regulation bill," he said, "on the understanding that that constitutional amendment would be adopted. As you know, it was defeated. My attitude on the regulation bill would have been very different had I known that the amendment was to be rejected."
The Wright bill met with practically no opposition in the Assembly, being rushed through the Lower House in the closing hours of the session. Had the Stetson bill passed the Senate, the machine would have tried to block and amend it in the Assembly as was done with the Direct Primary bill, but the measure would probably have been passed.
Had the anti-machine forces in the Senate been organized, the Stetson, and not the Wright bill, would have passed that body. Without organization, or even definite policy, in the face of organized machine opposition, it is astonishing - and at the same time most encouraging - that eighteen of the forty Senators stood by the Stetson bill to the end.