generally speaking from the beginning to the end of the session he voted
with the anti-machine element. Had the anti-machine forces made a
determined effort to organize the Senate and demonstrated a strength of
twenty-one votes, which would have been enough to organize,. Curtin
would certainly have been with them. The same is true of Welch, and it
is probably true of Price. This would have given the anti-machine forces
from twenty-two to twenty-four votes, a safe margin to have permitted
them to organize the Senate to carry out anti-machine policies.

The machine claquers will no doubt point gleefully to the fact that when
the test on the Railroad Regulation bills came, Anthony, Burnett,
Estudillo, Hurd and Walker strayed from the anti-machine fold. This
objection would have more weight had there ever been an anti-machine
fold. As a matter of fact, the anti-machine element in the Senate from
the day the session opened until it closed was unorganized, and without
leaders or detailed plan of action.

Admittedly Estudillo and Burnett strayed on the railroad regulation
question, but they did so believing the absolute rate provided in the
Stetson bill to be unconstitutional. All this will be brought out in the
chapters on railroad regulation measures, but in passing, it may be said
that Burnett, in the closing hours of the session, stated on the floor
of the Senate that he had voted against the Stetson bill and for the
Wright bill on the understanding that a constitutional amendment would
be passed setting at rest all question of the constitutionality of the
absolute rate. The machine leaders misled Senator Burnett. Machine votes
defeated the amendment.

Anthony, Estudillo and Walker stood out against the machine in the
direct primary fight which followed the defeat of the Stetson bill, and