Part 29 (1/2)

An important roll call was on - if the writer remembers correctly, it was on Burnett's motion to continue the investigation into the causes of the increase of freight and express rates. Price was present, but did not answer to the call of his name. The advocates of the resolution insisted that all vote, and demanded a call of the Senate. The doors were ordered closed, at which order Price made a run for the door.

Caminetti saw the move, understood it and started to intercept the fleeing Senator. But if Caminetti were quick, Price was quicker.

Caminetti missed his grab at Price, and so chased that gentleman to the door of the Senate chamber. The a.s.sistant Sergeant-at-Arms at the door was just swinging it closed as Price shot through. The determined Caminetti made a last grab at Price's coattails, but too late. The ma.s.sive doors banged closed, with Price, coattails and all, on the outside, and the balked Caminetti on the inside. Price didn't vote on that roll call.

The failure to return Leavitt to the Senate will be a decided loss for the machine, one hard to offset. Next to Wolfe, Leavitt was by far the ablest floor leader in the Senate. The brute force of the man, his grossness, his indifference to public opinion, made him an ideal machine leader. Leavitt's return from Alameda seems extremely doubtful.

His district takes in the notorious gambling community, Emeryville, which will be purged of the thug element that has dominated it, by the enforcement of the Walker-Otis law. With the loss of this portion of his const.i.tuency, Senator Leavitt's chance of re-election from Emeryville appears slim indeed.

But, according to rather persistent rumor, Senator Leavitt may be returned to the Senate, not from Alameda, but from the Siskiyou-Shasta District, the district represented by Weed. Leavitt has property up there, and the story runs that he will be a candidate from that part of the State. The voters of Shasta and Siskiyou, however, may conclude that they have something to say about it.

Senator Wright, the last of the Senators whose terms will have expired before the next session of the Legislature convenes, is being mentioned as a ”reform candidate” for Governor. The idea seems to be that he will run on his record made at the session of 1909. If this be true, he may not be a candidate for re-election to the Senate. Senator Wright's record as a State Senator has already been treated at length.

[103a] Senator Boynton was a consistent supporter of the Local Option bill from the beginning to the end of the session. He held, however, that the bill as originally drawn was not in proper form, and explained that he voted to have the bill returned to the committee that amendments, which he deemed necessary, could be made.

[104] Since the Legislature adjourned Senator Bates has been given a lucrative position in the United States Mint.

Chapter XXVIII.

Conclusion.

Events of the Session of 1909 Show That Before Any Effective Reform Can Be Brought About in California, Good Government Republicans and Democrats Must Unite to Organize Senate and a.s.sembly - Appointment of Senate Committees May Be Taken Out of the Hands of the Lieutenant-Governor.

In the opening chapter it was stated that the machine element in the Legislature of 1909, although in the minority, defeated the purposes of the reform majority, because of three princ.i.p.al reasons:

(1) The reform element was without organization.

(2) The reform members had, except in the anti-racetrack gambling fight, no definite plan of action.

(3) The reform members of both Houses permitted the machine to name presiding officers and appoint committees.

This third reason must appeal to those who have read the foregoing pages as the most important of all. The story of every machine success, in face of opposition, is that of advantage gained through the moral support given by the presiding officers[105], or of co-operation of committees, or of both. But, unfortunately, a stupid partisans.h.i.+p - a partisans.h.i.+p which the machine finds far more potent than bribe money - makes this cause of machine success more difficult to overcome than either of the others. Already a movement is on foot, the details of which the writer is not at liberty to make public, that will unite the reform element of the next Legislature into a working body, from the day nominations are made. Steps to this end were taken before the last Legislature adjourned. In the same way, the work of bringing reform issues before the public - reform of the ballot laws, amendment of the Direct Primary law, the simplification of the mode of criminal procedure - is being taken up in the same effective, commonsense way as was the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill. But here the progress of the commonsense element of machine opposition seems to halt. In spite of their experience of the last session, Democrats and Republicans who stand for good government hesitate at the suggestion of non-partisan organization of Senate and a.s.sembly. The writer has shown in the foregoing chapters that the machine Republicans and the machine Democrats were for practical purposes a unit in the organization of the Legislature of 1909. Why, then, should not the anti-machine Republicans and the anti-machine Democrats unite for purposes of organization, just as they united, at the session of 1909, to oppose vicious measures and to work for the pa.s.sage of good bills? That is a question which has never been satisfactorily answered. It leads us, however, to the question of the real line of division in Senate and a.s.sembly, and, for that matter, in State politics[106].

That the real division is no longer between political parties, or even between party factions, is apparent to the observer who has given the question any attention at all.

Not once, for example, did the California Legislature of 1909 divide on a party question; nor did it have to deal with any problem that had not at one time or another been endorsed by both parties. Both Democrats and Republicans in either State or county platforms had declared for the pa.s.sage of an Anti-Racetrack Gambling law, for an effective Direct Primary law, for an effective Railroad Regulation law, for the submission to the people of a Const.i.tutional Amendment granting the people the privilege of initiating laws. In the same way, county conventions of both parties - and county conventions are the closest to the people and most representative of them - had declared for local option, for the election of United States Senators by direct vote of the people, for amendments to the codes that should simplify proceedings in criminal cases, for effective railroad regulation. Estimating the purposes of the two parties by their county and State platforms, none of these reforms can be regarded as any more Democratic than Republican, and these were the issues with which the Legislature of 1909 was called upon to deal.

A glance at the tables of votes in the appendix will show that the a.s.semblymen and the Senators who voted against the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill, generally speaking, voted against the effective Stetson Railroad Regulation bill and for the ineffective Wright bill, opposed the provision in the Direct Primary bill giving the people an effective part in the selection of United States Senators, supported the pa.s.sage of the Change of Venue bill, opposed the pa.s.sage of the Local Option bill, opposed the submission of the Initiative amendment to the electors of the State. This negative element, opposed to policies which the normal citizen regards as making for the State's best interests, has in these pages been called the machine[107].

As has been shown in these pages, the interests of the several beneficiaries of the system are in effect pooled; one element helps the other. The managers of the several elements, the political agents, if you like, of the tenderloin, Southern Pacific, racetrack, and public-service monopolies generally; in a word, all who seek to evade the law or to secure undue special privileges or to continue secure in the possession of such privileges already secured, recognize that they must hang together or submit to a reckoning with the public, which must necessarily result in the breaking of the particular monopoly which each enjoys, be it in transportation, nickel-in-the-slot graft, or traffic in the bodies of young women. Should the political bureau of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, for example, lose the support of the tenderloin, or of the racetrack gamblers, or of any other powerful group of its political a.s.sociates, the corporation could no longer continue its strangle-hold upon the State. But none of its a.s.sociates would dare thus offend. Such is the machine, which, in the name of a protective tariff, ”sound money,” Abraham Lincoln, or Theodore Roosevelt, has organized the Legislature of California for sixteen years. Previous to 1895, there were California Legislatures organized in the name of Thomas Jefferson. But the machine has not taken the name of Thomas Jefferson in vain in California for many years[108].

Nevertheless, although acting under the name Republican, the machine is quite as dependent upon ”Democrats” as upon ”Republicans,” and as dependent upon either as upon the tenderloin, the brewery trust or the racetrack gambling element. It monopolizes neither party, but it divides both parties. Or it may be described as a canker that has eaten into both, diseased both, rendered both unwholesome, until a condition exists in the dominating parties that requires that the uncorrupted element of both unite to cut the diseased portion away[109].

As the machine divides the parties, so did it divide the Republican and Democratic delegations in the Senate and the a.s.sembly of the California Legislature of 1909. Hare and Kennedy, for example, Democratic Senators, voted constantly with Wolfe and Leavitt, Republican Senators, for machine policies. Nor was the opposition restricted to party lines.

Black and Boynton and Cutten, Republican Senators, were found voting constantly with Campbell and Holohan, Democratic Senators, against the machine. Between Black and Wolfe, Republicans, there was nothing in common during the entire session; nor was there anything in common between Campbell and Kennedy, Democrats. On practically every important issue, however, Kennedy, Democrat, and Wolfe, Republican, made common cause, while Black, Republican, and Campbell, Democrat, opposed them.

The same comparisons could be made in the a.s.sembly, where such Democrats as Wheelan and Baxter were found with Mott and Coghlan, Republicans, supporting machine policies, while opposed to them were anti-machine Republicans of the character of Bohnett and Callan, and anti-machine Democrats like Polsley and Mendenhall.