discovery was made that the bulk of the Assembly bills which had passed
the Assembly were being held in Senate committees, while the Senate
bills which had passed the Senate, were apparently anchored in Assembly
committees, and that the machine controlled the committees. The reform
members of each House had good cause for alarm. Every Senator and
Assemblyman has his "pet" measures. The reform Senators and Assemblymen
found that to get their bills out of committees they would have to treat
with the machine. Such a Senator or Assemblyman, with his constituents
clamoring for the passage of a bill held up in a machine-controlled
committee, had some claim to pardon if he turned suddenly attentive to
the machine olive branch. And the machine, by the way, always has the
olive branch out. Stand in with us, is their constant advance, and we
will see you through.

As a result of these delaying tactics, literally hundreds of bills which
had needlessly been held up in committees were forced upon the
consideration of the Senate during the last three weeks of the session.
Each House made records of passing more than 100 bills a day. There was
little pretense of reading the measures as required by the State
Constitution. The clerk at the desk mumbled over their titles; they were
voted upon and became laws. In the rush to get through, as will be shown
by example in other chapters, Senators and Assemblymen voted for
measures to which they were openly opposed. The machine minority was
merely reaping the benefits of a situation which the cleverness of its
leaders had created.

Although machine-advocated and unimportant measures could be passed in
such a situation, bills which the machine opposed could not be[17].
Machine-opposed measures were either held up in committees until their
passage was out of the question, or they were denied consideration in