Given the presiding officers of the Senate and Assembly and the appointment of the Committees of both bodies, the machine minority in the Legislature had comparatively little difficulty in preventing the passage of desirable measures. Thus, the Commonwealth Club bills to simplify and expedite proceedings in criminal cases, or, if you like, to prevent quackery in the practice of the criminal law, were, by clever manipulation, defeated, although if fairly presented to Senate and Assembly they undoubtedly would have become laws[74].
But when it came to passing vicious measures in the face of the opposition of the unorganized majority of both Houses, the machine had a harder job on its hands. A majority vote of each House is required for the passage of a measure. To get through its bills, then, the machine had to create a situation in which vicious measures could be rushed through without the unorganized reformers knowing what was being done. By preventing action on a large majority of the measures pending before the Legislature until the end of the session, such a situation was created. In the confusion of the closing days of the session, not only were good bills denied passage, but vicious bills, in spite of the opposition of a majority of the Legislature, were passed. Some normally anti-machine members in such a situation become worn out, get discouraged and vote for machine policies to secure machine support for measures, the passage of which their constituents at home are demanding. Others, in the confusion of a whirlwind close of the session, vote for measures which they have no time to read, and which they cannot understand. Thus, even with a majority of Senate and Assembly against machine policies, the clever machine leaders often slip through measures which could not be passed early in the session, when the members have opportunity to study the bills upon which they are called upon to act, and before the ranks of the reform element have been broken.
This was very well illustrated at the Session of 1909 by the passage of the so-called Change of Venue bill[74a]. This measure was introduced in the Assembly by Grove L. Johnson. Under its provisions a person charged with crime would have been permitted upon his whim or caprice to allege bias and disqualify the Judge before whom he was to be tried. The Legislature of 1907 was admittedly controlled by the machine, but even the Legislature of 1907 did not dare pass the Change of Venue bill. The reform Legislature of 1909, however, did pass it. The manner in which it was passed is a lesson in machine methods. To the credit of Governor Gillett let it be said, however, that he vetoed the measure[75].
Grove L. Johnson having introduced the bill, it was referred to Johnson's committee, the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly. The Committee held it until February 5, when it was referred back to the Assembly with the recommendation that it "do pass." On March 13, eleven days before adjournment, it passed the Assembly, by a vote of 42 to 15, 41 votes being required for its passage. Assemblymen like Drew, Telfer, Wilson and Stuckenbruck, men who fought the machine and machine policies from the beginning to the end of the session, voted for the bill. The negative vote of any two of them would have defeated it[76].
The passage in the Assembly of an important reform measure as late as March 13, would have meant its defeat in the Senate. Though in the majority the anti-machine Senators could not have forced a reform measure through the machine-controlled committees, machine-controlled even when a majority of a committee was anti-machine[77]. Measures of the Change of Venue bill stamp, however, had a clear way. The Change of Venue bill was on March 15 referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. On March 16, twenty-four hours after, the Committee returned the bill with the recommendation that it do pass. On March 19, with twenty-two Senators opposed to its passage, and eighteen favoring it, with twenty-one votes necessary for its passage, the bill passed the Senate. This apparently impossible feat was, in the last two weeks of the session, a comparatively easy task for the machine.
To begin with, Senator Black, who opposed the bill, was ill at his home at Palo Alto. This left twenty-one Senators against the measure and eighteen for. The line-up was as follows:
For the Change of Venue bill - Anthony, Bates, Bills, Finn, Hare,
Hartman, Hurd, Leavitt, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage,
Weed, Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 18.
Against the Change of Venue bill - Bell, Birdsall, Boynton,
Burnett[76a], Caminetti, Campbell, Cartwright, Curtin, Cutten,
Estudillo, Holohan, Lewis, Kennedy, Miller, Roseberry, Rush, Sanford,
Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson, Walker - 21.
On the face of it, the outlook for the passage of the Change of Venue bill in the Senate was not good. The machine, however, planned to pass the bill on March 19.
The machine leaders went at the job systematically. When the Senators took their seats that Friday morning, they found that at Senator Bates' request, Assembly Bill 6 (the Change of Venue bill) had been put on the Special Urgency File. The Special Urgency File was to be considered at 8 o'clock Friday evening. Senator Bates stated in an interview that he had placed Assembly Bill No. 6 on the Special Urgency File "at the request of a fellow Senator." Who the fellow Senator was, Bates refused to say. Bates insisted, however, that he knew nothing about Assembly Bill No, 6, and could give no reason why it should be made a matter of "special urgency." Senator Bates has since the Legislature adjourned been given a position of trust in the United States Mint.