walk, he rushed into it, sending a scathing letter to Perkins on that
gentleman's Senatorial record. Perkins' reply and explanation came as a
counter blow. The fire was tempered out of Callan's letter. Callan had
permitted Perkins to select the fighting ground, and Perkins had
exhibited admirable judgment.

The attack on Perkins had better been made on his attitude toward the
shipping interests of California - the development of the isthmian route
to New York, for example; on his attitude toward the machine, whose
strangle-hold upon the State is locked with federal patronage; on his
attitude toward the so-called "Roosevelt policies"; on his attitude
toward the Roosevelt administration, upon which he hung with the dead
weight of crafty, persistent obstruction. There were plenty of
vulnerable points in the Perkins armor, but naturally in selecting the
point of attack, Perkins carefully avoided them. So Callan's bolt
rebounded harmlessly, to the astonishment of the various well-meaning
reformers, and the intense satisfaction of the machine, whose somewhat
anxious leaders recognized full well that Callan's discomfiture would
discourage attacks from other possibly effective sources.

The next move against Perkins came the week before the Legislature
convened. A number of anti-machine Republicans met at San Francisco to
canvass the situation, and formulate a plan to defeat Perkins if
possible. It was found that on joint Senate and Assembly ballot, the
Democrats would have twenty-nine votes and the Republicans ninety-one.
Sixty-one votes are required for the election of a Senator. The
Republicans at the meeting considered these twenty-nine votes as with
them in the selection of an anti-machine Republican for Perkins' place.
The anti-machine Republicans thus in revolt against the machine,
themselves numbered twenty Senators and Assemblymen, which made