Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 | Page 8

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.
Had the line of division in the Senate been Republican and Democratic,
the Republicans in the Senate might very properly have caucused. But
inasmuch as the machine Republicans stood during the entire session
for one set of policies, and the anti-machine Republicans for another,
the caucus was at best an incongruous affair. Especially is this true
when it is considered that the anti-machine Republicans immediately
after they had left the caucus united with the anti-machine Democrats
in a three-months contest with the united machine Democrats and
machine Republicans. But having surrendered the organization of the
Senate to the machine, the anti-machine Senators, although in the
majority, fought under a handicap, finally lost the weaker of their
supporters[6], and in the end went down in defeat. Had the real
majority, rather than the artificial majority, of the Senate caucused on

organization, that is to say, had the anti-machine Republicans and the
anti-machine Democrats caucused, and organized to carry out the
policies for which they stood and for which they fought together during
the entire session, the Republican-Democratic-machine element would
have been defeated at every turn. But no such policy governed, and the
anti-machine Republicans waddled after precedent into the caucus trap
that had been set for them. Later on in the session the anti-machine
Republicans and anti-machine Democrats did go into caucus together,
and by doing so won the hardest fought fight of the session.[7]
In the Republican Senate caucus on organization, the machine Senators,
under the crafty leadership of Wolfe and Leavitt, worked their unhappy
anti-machine associates much as a playful cat, with a sense of humor,
toys with a mouse. As the cat lets the mouse think that it has escaped,
the machine let the anti-machine forces think they were organizing the
caucus. Leavitt had been leader of the Republican caucus at previous
sessions but he suffered "overwhelming defeat" at the hands of a
"reformer." The "reformer" in question was Senator Wright, who had
been well advertised as the father of the reform Direct Primary law.
Before the session closed, the anti-machine element was to learn just
the sort of "reformer" Wright is. Wright, however, in the interest of
"harmony," was nominated for caucus leadership by Senator Wolfe.
Leavitt's name was not even mentioned. The unanimous vote went to
Senator Wright, who was duly declared elected Chairman of the Senate
Republican caucus for the Thirty-eighth Session of the California
Legislature.
The reformers were also permitted to name the Secretary of the caucus.
This time a genuine anti-machine Senator was selected, A. E. Boynton.
And then came a question which brought out the