measures were given favorable recommendation by a Senate committee. Thus
the Anti-Racetrack Gambling bill, the Direct Primary bill, the Local
Option bill, received the stamp of Senate committee disapproval. They
were returned to the Senate with the recommendation that they do not
pass. The same is largely true of the action of the Assembly
Committees.[4]

If machine-controlled committees could delay action on reform measures,
they could at the same time expedite the passage of bills which the
machine element favored, or which had been amended to the machine's
liking. Thus the Change of Venue bill, which reached the Senate on March
15, was returned from the Senate Judiciary Committee the day following,
March 16, with the recommendation that it "do pass." The Wheelan bills
reached the Senate on March 17, and were at once referred to the
Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee that very day reported them
back with favorable recommendation. Had they been delayed in the
committee even 48 hours, their final passage would have been improbable.

Curiously enough, the Judiciary Committee was the one Senate committee
whose members President Porter did not name. Following a time-honored
custom, every attorney at law in the Senate was made a member of the
committee. It so happened that ten of the nineteen lawyers in the Senate
were on the side of reform as against machine policies, eight generally
voted with the machine, while the nineteenth gave evidence of being in a
state of chronic doubt. This gave the reform element a majority of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. But President Porter had the naming of the
chairman of the committee, and the order of the rank of its members. The
Lieutenant-Governor's fine discrimination is shown by the fact that the
Chairman of the Committee and the four ranking members were counted on
the side of the machine.