request of its author.

Under the committee's rules unanimous consent of the Assembly was made
necessary for such advancement.

The proposed rules would have enabled the machine forces to smother in
committee any measure the machine wished to defeat. A two-thirds vote
would have been necessary to suspend the rules to have a bill recalled
from committee, that is to say, the votes of fifty-four Assemblymen.
Twenty-seven Assemblymen could then have held the measure in committee
until the session closed.

Had the committee-prepared rules been adopted, the probabilities are
that the battleground of the session would have been transferred from
the Senate Chamber to the Assembly.

But the proposed rules were not adopted. A fight against adopting the
committee's report was started by Drew of Fresno. Mr. Drew introduced a
resolution rejecting the rules submitted by the committee, and
substituting the rules of 1907, to govern the session of 1909. Johnson
of Sacramento led the defense that rallied to the committee's report.
But Johnson's wit failed against the argument which Drew, Callan,
Preston, Young and Cattell offered. The gentlemen denounced the rules
which the committee had offered as "vicious, despotic and gagging."
Drew's resolution was adopted by a vote of 41 to 32, the committee's
report rejected and the rules of 1907 accepted for the session of
1909[12]. It was a decided victory for the anti-machine forces, and
brought gloom to the scheming machine leaders. But it developed later
that not a few who had voted for the Drew resolution were safely
machine; while many who had voted against it were anti-machine, but had