These measures are described in “The Story of the California Legislature of 1909.” The methods employed to defeat them were told in detail. See chapter “Defeat of the Commonwealth Club Bills.”
Under the provisions of measures which became laws at the 1911 session, it is held that it will be impossible hereafter to put grand jurors on trial as was done in the San Francisco graft cases. Hereafter, too, an indictment or information may be amended by the District Attorney without leave of the Court at any time before the defendant pleads; and at any time thereafter in the discretion of the Court where it can be done without prejudice to the substantial rights of the defendant.
Another measure takes from a witness his privilege of refusing to give testimony on the grounds that it may incriminate him. The witness is safeguarded, however, by a provision that he shall not be liable thereafter to prosecution nor punishment with respect to the offense regarding which such testimony is given.
Transcriber’s Note
Footnotes 355 and 477 were skipped. Footnote 301 has duplicate anchors. The mis-numbering is retained as printed. Footnote 427 refers to “Chapter XV ‘The Ford Trials’.” Chapter XX is entitled “The Ford Trials and Acquittals”. The apparent reference, however, may be to a separate volume, so it has been retained.
Some words are spelled multiple ways (e.g. ‘indorse’/‘endorse’, ‘employe’/‘employee’, ‘Beaney’/‘Beany’). These variants are retained. Some words (e.g. ‘increditably’ for ‘incredibly’) are likely mistakes and are corrected, but noted as well. The author regularly elides the second ‘l’ in words like ‘wilfully’ and ‘skilfully’. Where the word (e.g., ‘subpoenaes’) appears in quoted material, it appears as printed.
‘Pittsburg’ (PA), without the ending ‘h’ is left as printed, since the letter had been officially removed in 1890, but was restored only in 1911 as this text was being written.
Hyphenation is also somewhat irregular. Occurrences of hyphens at line breaks are resolved according to other instances in the text, or if there are none, in accordance with modern usage.
The following list includes apparent errors found in the original text. Where there is an obvious typographical error, as opposed to a spelling variant, the correction has been made. When the error occurs in a note, the page referred to is the location of the page where the note begins, though the error may appear in a continuation on a following page. The [] brackets are used to denote the error, either by changing, omitting, adding or reversing characters. A slash (/) denotes the change required to gain a correct usage.