Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 — A Closer Reading

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Authors: Hichborn, Franklin, 1869-1963 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2001 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: California -- Politics and government Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 92,774

Reading time 404 min

Text sections 9

For Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 — A Closer Reading, the stored edition analysis reports 92,774 words, 6 hr 44 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #2896

Franklin Hichborn's 1909 legislative session account focuses on how bills were passed or defeated, using three case studies—anti-racetrack gambling, direct primary, and railroad regulation—to reveal machine politics and procedural maneuvering in Sacramento.

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I. Breaking Ground II. Organization of the Senate III. Organization of the Assembly IV. The Machine in Control V. Election of United States Senator VI. The Anti-Racetrack Gambling Bill VII. Passage of the Anti-Racetrack Gambling Bill VIII. The Direct Primary Bill IX. The Machine Defeated in the Senate X. Fight Over the Assembly Amendments XI. Machine Amends Direct Primary Bill XII. The Railroad Regulation Issue XIII. Machine Defeats the Stetson Bill XIV. Railroad Measures XV. Defeat of the Commonwealth Club Bills XVI. How the Change of Venue Bill Was Passed XVII. Passage of the Wheelan Bills XVIII. Defeat of the Local Option Bill XIX. Defeat of the Initiative Amendment XX. Defeat of the Anti-Japanese Bills XXI. The Rule Against Lobbying XXII. The Machine Lobbyist at Work XXIII Influence of the San Francisco Delegation XXIV. Attacks on and Defense of the Fish Commission XXV. The Rewarding of the Faithful XXVI. The Holdover Senators XXVII. The Retiring Senators XXVIII. Conclusion Appendix Tables of Votes Postal Direct Primary Dr. Montgomery's Report The Anti-Japanese Resolution

In writing the Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909, the purpose has been, not only to show what was done at Sacramento last Winter, but, what is by far more important, how it was done. To this end, the several measures are divided under three heads, namely, those dealing with moral, with political and with industrial issues. Instead of scattering on all the measures introduced, or even a considerable part of them, the principal issue of each group, that which meant the most to The People, and upon which the machine centered its efforts, has been selected for detailed consideration. On the score of the moral issues, the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill has been taken as the most important; while the Direct Primary bill is dealt with as the chief political issue, and the railroad regulation measures as involving the chief industrial issue. The story of the fight over these bills is the story of the session of 1909. The events attending the passage of the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill, the amendment of the Direct Primary bill, and 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.

Santa Clara, Cal., July 4, 1909.

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.

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Franklin Hichborn opens his account of the 1909 California Legislature by declaring that his purpose is not merely to show what was done, but how it was done. He organizes the session's work into three categories—moral, political, and industrial issues—and selects one key bill from each: the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill, the Direct Primary bill, and the Stetson Railroad Regulation bill. This tripartite structure gives the narrative a clear analytical frame, allowing Hichborn to trace the machine's tactics across different policy domains.

A Reporter’s Anatomy of Legislative Maneuver

Hichborn writes with the precision of a journalist who has watched the session from the gallery. He does not simply record votes; he reconstructs the sequence of motions, referrals, and delays that determined a bill’s fate. In describing the Local Option bill, for example, he notes that Speaker Stanton held the Assembly version in committee for over two months—from January 8 to March 13—while assuring proponents it would pass if the Senate acted first. The bill was then “smothered” in the upper house. Hichborn’s language is blunt: “the smothering process most suggestively indicates how such things can be done.” He attributes the outcome not to open opposition but to covert arrangement, a pattern he returns to repeatedly.

The Machine’s Use of Procedure as Weapon

Throughout the excerpts, Hichborn emphasizes procedural detail as a window into power. He reports that motions to reconsider the Wheelan bills were made on March 22, the same day as the final fight on the Direct Primary bill, and that “nobody was thinking of much of anything else that day.” The timing, he implies, was deliberate. He also notes that the Assembly history of March 23 fails to record those reconsideration motions, forcing him to correct the record by citing the Senate Journal. This attention to official documentation—and to what it omits—is a hallmark of Hichborn’s method. He treats the legislative record as both source and suspect, cross-checking journals against newspaper accounts and his own observations.

Voice and Pace: From Exposé to Procedural Chronicle

Hichborn’s narrative voice shifts between two registers. In the preface and chapter openings, he adopts the tone of a reform-minded muckraker, asserting that “the well-being of the State requires” that opponents of the machine organize the legislature. But in the body of the chapters, he settles into a patient, almost legalistic chronicle of committee referrals, amendment votes, and parliamentary tactics. The pace slows when he traces a bill’s path through multiple readings, then quickens during set-piece confrontations. This alternation gives the reader a sense of both the grinding routine and the sudden crises of a legislative session. Hichborn rarely editorializes within the procedural passages; he lets the sequence of events imply the critique.

Readers should approach Hichborn’s text as a contemporary political report rather than a retrospective history. He writes from inside the reform movement, and his judgments—about the machine, about Speaker Stanton’s promises, about the “tenderloin element”—are part of the story he tells. The appendices, including tables of votes and Dr. Montgomery’s report, offer raw data that can be compared with Hichborn’s narrative. For those interested in legislative process, the book is a detailed case study of how a determined minority can use procedure to defeat popular measures.

There’s a particular ache in reading how Hichborn traces a bill’s quiet death through committee rooms—the same vanished world I found in Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893) — Context and Discussion. Both feel like overhearing men in stiff collars argue about things that mattered enormously, then slipped away. I keep thinking about how much work it takes to make democracy look inevitable.