Part 14 (1/2)

Senator Roseberry, who voted for the absolute rate, confessed himself as much at sea as was Senator Miller. Senator Estudillo, who voted for the maximum rate, insisted that he had not been able to make up his mind which should be adopted.

On the other hand, Senator Cutten, himself a lawyer and a close student of the legal questions involved, stated that while he had thought originally that the maximum rate is the only const.i.tutional rate that can be fixed, he had been forced to come to the conclusion that the absolute rate alone is const.i.tutional.

But in the end the Wright bill and not the Stetson bill pa.s.sed the Senate. It pa.s.sed after a day of debate in which the issue became clouded, if anything, worse than at any stage of the proceedings.

Leavitt and Wolfe, with Wright chipping in with a me-too word now and then, led the debate in favor of the Wright bill. Senators Stetson, Boynton, Cutten, Roseberry and Miller led the fight for the Stetson bill. Significant enough was the fact that the line-up of Senate leaders was precisely the same as that in the fight which the machine carried on against the Direct Primary bill.

Miller's argument in favor of the Stetson bill showed the confusion under which the advocates of effective railroad regulation were laboring:

”If we adopt the Wright bill,” said Miller, ”the railroads will be satisfied and never dispute it in the Courts. Whereas, by the adoption of the Stetson bill the railroads will almost be compelled to appeal to the Courts, and then we shall have a quick decision on the question in which we are all interested. If the Courts sustain the Stetson bill, we shall have a law that will do all we want for the present.”[64]

The debate on the measures was on a motion by Stetson that the Stetson bill be subst.i.tuted for the Wright bill. In this Stetson made a serious mistake. He staked his whole bill on one issue, that of absolute or maximum rates. On all other points, the Stetson bill was better than the Wright bill. It was a mistake in policy for Stetson to stake the fate of his measure on a single issue.

Stetson's motion was lost by a vote of 16 to 22; the Stetson bill was accordingly not subst.i.tuted for the Wright bill, and the Wright bill, which had come from the Judiciary Committee with a minority report back of it, went to third reading and final pa.s.sage.

The vote by which Stetson's motion was defeated, was as follows:

To subst.i.tute the Stetson bill for the Wright bill - Bell, Birdsall, Black, Boynton, Caminetti, Campbell, Cartwright, Curtin, Cutten, Holohan, Lewis, Miller, Sanford, Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson - 16.

Against subst.i.tuting the Stetson bill for the Wright bill - Anthony, Bates, Bills, Burnett, Estudillo, Finn, Hare, Hartman, Hurd, Kennedy, Leavitt, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage, Walker, Weed, Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 22.

Senators Roseberry and Rush were absent from the room when the vote was taken but both were for the Stetson bill, which would have made the vote 22 to 18 in favor of the Wright bill.

The twenty Senators whose names are printed in Italics are the twenty who voted with Leavitt and Wolfe to maintain the deadlock on the Direct Primary bill that the measure might be so amended that the electors of California would be denied a practical, State-wide vote for United States Senators. But one of the twenty, Lewis, voted for the Stetson bill, while nineteen of them voted for the Wright bill.

On the other hand, only three of the Senators, Estudillo, Anthony and Walker, who stood out for an honest Direct Primary law, voted against the Stetson bill and for the Wright bill. Walker had supported the Stetson bill in the Committee on Corporations, but stumbled into the machine ranks when it came to final vote. Had the anti-machine had an organization, such as the machine Democrats and Republicans maintained, Walker's blunder could have been prevented. Probably, too, Estudillo and Anthony would have remained with the anti-machine forces[65]. This would have given the Stetson bill twenty-one votes, and a.s.sured its pa.s.sage.

Another vote that should have been saved to the reformers was that of Burnett. Burnett was clearly tricked into voting for the Wright bill.

When the Stetson bill received the favorable recommendation of the Senate Judiciary Committee, machine claquers filled the air with the indefinite promise that in the event of the Wright bill becoming a law, a const.i.tutional amendment would be adopted, by which all ambiguity in the State Const.i.tution on the question of maximum and absolute rates would be removed. The amendment was then pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which finally reported it favorably.

After the Wright bill had been pa.s.sed, the amendment was defeated by machine votes, as will be shown in the next chapter.

In the closing days of the session, when Burnett was urging that steps be taken for investigation into the increase of freight rates, he called attention to the fate of that railroad-regulation amendment.

”I was led to vote as I did for the Railroad Regulation bill,” he said, ”on the understanding that that const.i.tutional amendment would be adopted. As you know, it was defeated. My att.i.tude on the regulation bill would have been very different had I known that the amendment was to be rejected.”

The Wright bill met with practically no opposition in the a.s.sembly, being rushed through the Lower House in the closing hours of the session. Had the Stetson bill pa.s.sed the Senate, the machine would have tried to block and amend it in the a.s.sembly as was done with the Direct Primary bill, but the measure would probably have been pa.s.sed.

Had the anti-machine forces in the Senate been organized, the Stetson, and not the Wright bill, would have pa.s.sed that body. Without organization, or even definite policy, in the face of organized machine opposition, it is astonis.h.i.+ng - and at the same time most encouraging - that eighteen of the forty Senators stood by the Stetson bill to the end.

[64] The question to which Senator Miller referred was: Has the Legislature power under the Const.i.tution to authorize the Railroad Commissioners to fix the absolute rate? a question upon which the machine does not propose the Supreme Court shall be required to pa.s.s.

[65] Walker and Estudillo were bitterly condemned for their vote for the Wright bill. Incidentally, the writer has been roundly criticized for offering the excuse in their behalf that these two men indicated by their att.i.tude on other measures throughout the session that they would have continued with the reform element in the matter of railroad regulation, had the anti-machine Senators been organized to give effective resistance to the machine. Perhaps the sanest of this criticism, certainly the most reasonable, is from a gentleman who was a close observer of the work of the session. He says:

”The course of the railroad rate bill from my point of view looked somewhat different in many details, at any rate, from your account of it. I cannot bring myself to think that it was defeated by any chance at the hands of a friendly Legislature. I think that what chances there were were mostly added to the number of votes the bill got and that the att.i.tude of men like Walker and Estudillo on that bill was fundamental and to have been expected from the start. Of course what you say about the woeful lack of organization amongst the individual men was only too apparent. That phenomenon reaches back still deeper and is based upon the quality of human nature which exerts itself more persistently and more energetically and with soldier-like rhythm of compact organization when private selfish interests are involved, than when the general interest and somewhat vague uncentered end of public welfare is concerned.”

But in spite of this very reasonable view, from a very reasonable gentleman, the fact remains that in the Committee on Corporations, Walker stood out against the machine on this very issue, and that in the direct primary fight both Walker and Estudillo stood out against the machine to the end. Had the anti-machine element been organized, the Stetson bill and not the Wright bill would in all probability have been pa.s.sed.

Chapter XIV.