Before taking up Assembly bill 222, companion bill to 221, the Senate passed three measures and considered several others. By the time Assembly bill 222 was reached, Senator Bell had got his bearings, and voted against it. Caminetti had also found himself, and although Caminetti voted for the measure, he gave notice, that on the next legislative day he would move for its reconsideration.
The third of the bills, No. 223, followed 222, and Walker, who had voted for the two other bills, voted "no." The bill was passed by twenty-three votes, Cutten voting "aye" for the purpose of giving notice to reconsider.
The motions to reconsider were voted upon on the afternoon of Monday, March 22, the day of the final fight on the Direct Primary bill in both Senate and Assembly. Nobody was thinking of much of anything else that day. In every instance reconsideration was denied[80]. The vote by which they had passed the Senate stood.
[79] Governor Gillett signed Assembly bills Nos. 221 and 222. They are now the law of the State. Assembly bill No. 223 he did not sign. It did not, therefore, become a law.
[80] The Assembly history of March 23, fails to record that the motions to reconsider were made on the three Wheelan bills. In an article concerning these bills which the writer prepared for the Sacramento Bee, governed by the official record of the measures, the History of the House in which they originated, he stated that motions for their reconsideration were not made. The Senate Journal of March 22, however, pages 23 and 26, shows that these motions were made, and in all three cases defeated.
Chapter XVIII.
Defeat of the Local Option Bill.
Peculiar Arrangement by Which the Bill Was Sidetracked in the Assembly -
Stanton Promised That It Should Pass the Lower House If It Passed the
Senate - How It Was Smothered in the Upper House.
Because there is no particular reason why California should not have a Local Option law, in the face of popular demand for it, a large number of very worthy citizens assumed that one would be passed. The fact seems to have been lost sight of that the tenderloin element opposes such legislation, and that the management of the so-called liquor interests organized as the "Royal Arch," takes a shortsighted view of Local Option provisions. The machine was thus interested. Its representatives in Senate and Assembly did not propose that any Local Option bill should pass. So the Local Option bill was smothered. The smothering process most suggestively indicates how such things can be done.
The measure was introduced in the Assembly by Wyllie and in the Senate by Estudillo. In the face of the popular demand for the passage of such a bill, and the exasperation of a no small portion of the voters of the State, at the mistake - or trick - by which in 1907 the only measure resembling a Local Option law was rubbed off the statute books, it was not good policy to fight the bill in the open. So the machine proceeded to do covertly what would have been "poor politics" to do openly[81].