these measures illustrates again how the machine element defeats the
purpose of The People, and overrides what are the constitutional
rights - and should be rights in fact - of every American citizen.

Measures which involved no particular contest between the good
government and the machine forces - measures patched up by interested
parties and slipped through the Legislature without opposition and
generally without comment - although many of them of great importance, are
not touched upon. The histories of those selected for consideration show
the machine, or if you like, the system, at its work of passing
undesirable measures, and of blocking the passage of good measures. If
the Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 assist
the citizens of California to understand how this is done; if it give
them that knowledge of the weakness, the strength, the purposes, and the
affiliations of the Senators and Assemblymen who sat in the Legislature
of 1909, a knowledge of which the machine managers have had heretofore a
monopoly; if it point the way for a new method of publicity to crush
corruption and to promote reform - a way which others better prepared for
the work than I, may, in California and even in other States, follow - the
labor of preparing this volume for the press will have been justified.

Franklin Hichborn.

Santa Clara, Cal., July 4, 1909.



Chapter I.