idleness during the first two months of the session. Such is by no means
the case; Senators and Assemblymen never worked harder. The machine
leaders during the first month of the session craftily kept the members
wrangling in committees. During the second month the Senate was kept
working day and night passing comparatively unimportant Senate bills,
and the Assembly working as hard passing Assembly bills; but the Senate
passed very few Assembly bills and the Assembly very few Senate bills.
As a measure must pass both Houses to become a law, few bills were sent
to the Governor for his approval. Thus during the first two months of
the session many bills passed in one house or the other, but pitifully
few passed the Legislature.

The reform element, working sixteen hours a day not unlike so many mice
in a wheel, were apparently in complete ignorance of the situation which
they were creating. Senators whose bills had passed the Senate began to
complain that they could not get the measures out of the Assembly
committee; Assemblymen whose measures had passed the Assembly were as
loud in their charges that their bills were being held up in Senate
committees. The machine actually turned this early dissatisfaction to
its advantage. Soon it was being announced on the floor of the Assembly:
"If Senate committees will not act on Assembly bills, then the Assembly
committees will not act on Senate bills." The Senate made the same
threats as to Assembly bills. So, for about a week, Senate committees
openly slighted Assembly bills, while Assembly committees in retaliation
slighted Senate bills. The situation was very amusing; it was, too,
highly satisfactory to the machine.

About the first week in March - the Legislature adjourned March 24 - the
anti-machine members awoke to the fact that in spite of their day and
night sessions, little had been accomplished. The further disquieting