Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 | Page 4

the defeat of the Stetson Railroad Regulation bill, with the attending incident of the passage of the Wright Railroad bill, show, as nothing else can, how the machine controls and manipulates a Legislature - and such is the purpose of this little volume.
The efforts of justice-loving men to simplify the criminal codes, to the end that rich and poor alike may have equal opportunity in the trial courts - not in theory alone but in fact - and the successful efforts of the machine to block this reform, have made detailed consideration of the defeat of the Commonwealth Club bills and the passage of the Wheelan bills, and the so-called Change of Venue bill timely. And the story of these measures illustrates again how the machine element defeats the purpose of The People, and overrides what are the constitutional rights - and should be rights in fact - of every American citizen.
Measures which involved no particular contest between the good government and the machine forces - measures patched up by interested parties and slipped through the Legislature without opposition and generally without comment - although many of them of great importance, are not touched upon. The histories of those selected for consideration show the machine, or if you like, the system, at its work of passing undesirable measures, and of blocking the passage of good measures. If the Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 assist the citizens of California to understand how this is done; if it give them that knowledge of the weakness, the strength, the purposes, and the affiliations of the Senators and Assemblymen who sat in the Legislature of 1909, a knowledge of which the machine managers have had heretofore a monopoly; if it point the way for a new method of publicity to crush corruption and to promote reform - a way which others better prepared for the work than I, may, in California and even in other States, follow - the labor of preparing this volume for the press will have been justified.
Franklin Hichborn.
Santa Clara, Cal., July 4, 1909.

Chapter I.

Breaking Ground.
Although the Reform Element had a Majority in Both Senate and Assembly, Good Bills Were Defeated, and Vicious Measures Passed - Three Reasons for This: (1) Reform Element Was Without Plan of Action, (2) Was Without Organization; (3) The Machine Was Permitted to Organize Both Senate and Assembly.

The personnel of the California Legislature of 1909, was, all things considered, better than that of any other Legislature that has assembled in California in a decade or more. There were, to be sure, in both Senate and Assembly men who were constantly on the wrong side of every question affecting the moral, political or industrial well-being of the State, but a majority of each House labored for the passage of good laws, laws which would not only silence and satisfy constituents, but prove effective and accomplish the purpose for which they had been drawn. Just as earnestly as they worked for the passage of good laws, a majority of the members of the Senate as well as a majority of the members of the Assembly opposed the passage of vicious measures, and of measures ostensibly introduced to work needed reform but drawn in such a manner as to be, from a practical standpoint, ineffective.
And yet, regardless of the purpose of this majority, the so-called "Change of Venue" [1] bill was passed, and the "Judicial Column" bill, intended to take the Judiciary out of politics, was denied passage. The infamous "Wheelan bills," aimed at the complication of the Grand jury system, went through both Houses, while the Commonwealth Club bills, drawn to simplify the methods of criminal procedure, were held up and eventually defeated. The ineffective Wright Railroad Regulation bill became a law, while the Stetson Railroad measure effective as finally amended - was rejected. The provision in the Direct Primary bill for the selection of United States Senators by State-wide vote was stricken out, and the meaningless advisory, district vote plan substituted.
Certainly, the accomplishment of the Legislature does not line with the purpose of a majority of its members. The voter is naturally asking why the majority in both Houses standing for good legislation and opposing bad, accomplished so little; how it was that a minority, at practically every turn, defeated a majority.
There were three principal reasons for this outcome.
(1) The machine, as its name indicates, is a definite organization, with recognized leaders. The anti-machine element was without organization or recognized leaders.
(2) The reform-advocating majority, except in the anti-racetrack gambling fight, was without definite plan of action. The majority was, for example, for the passage of a direct primary law that would, first, take the control of politics out of the hands of political bosses big and little, and, second, give the people