forty-nine votes against Perkins. In addition, an even dozen Republican
Senators and Assemblymen were counted upon as willing to vote against
Perkins if his defeat could be shown to be certain. This would have
given the anti-Perkins element sixty-one votes, just enough to elect.
For one of their number to fail, meant a deadlock; for two, if
Republicans, to fail meant Perkins' election. It was a slender chance,
but the possibility of success kept the movement alive until the hour of
the Senatorial caucus.

Those who were promoting the movement were not at the time aware that
six of the Democratic Assemblymen and one of the Democratic Senators
were governed by such high conceptions of their duties as citizens and
responsibilities as legislators, that they were to cast their votes in
the Senatorial election for a San Francisco saloon keeper, on the ground
that he is a "good fellow" and had "spent money liberally for the
party." This of itself made the defeat of Perkins impossible.

The anti-Perkins forces were also handicapped by the fact that they had
no candidate. The machine had been craftily booming Perkins for years;
the reformers had boomed nobody[19]. They were, then, without material
for a positive fight; all they could do was negative, which is always
confession of weakness. In addition, aside from the Bulletin, there was
no San Francisco publication that could be counted upon to back their
movement. The Call was openly supporting Perkins. The movement against
Perkins, while it admittedly represented the attitude of the majority of
the electors of the State, and the feeling of a safe majority of both
Houses of the Legislature, was without one element of real strength[20].

Under the United States Revised Statutes, the Legislature was called
upon, to proceed on the second Tuesday after organization, to elect