investigate the necessity and feasibility of putting on the Pacific
line. Mr. Bristow, in a report that fairly sizzled with criticism of
Southern Pacific and Pacific Mail Steamship Company methods, recommended
that the government line be established. When Pacific freight rates were
arbitrarily raised just before the Legislature convened, shippers of the
State appealed, not to Senator Perkins or to Senator Flint, but to
Senator Bristow from interior Kansas, asking that he concern himself
with having government steamers put on the San Francisco-Panama route.
Bristow replied that he would do what he could, that he was receiving
many letters from Western shippers who favored the plan, but that the
chief difficulty in the way was the opposition of the California
delegation in the Senate.

This Bristow letter caused all the trouble at the Perkins caucus. The
suggestion was made that Perkins owed it to the State to explain the
charges brought against him by the Senator from Kansas. A resolution was
accordingly introduced providing that a telegram be sent Senator Perkins
calling upon him to state whether the charge made by Senator Bristow
were true.

Immediately the pro-Perkins people assumed the dignified position that
such a telegram would be an insult to the venerable Senator from
California. Nobody seems to have taken the trouble to state that the
Bristow charges were untrue, but that the requesting of the Senator to
answer them would be an insult to that dignitary was made subject of the
warmest oratory. So warm was it, that the opposition to Perkins melted
away like wax - or putty, if putty melts - until but five members of the
caucus had the courage to vote to ask Perkins to declare himself on the
transportation problem. Callan of San Francisco voted for it, so did
Drew of Fresno, so did Young of Berkeley and two others. But 77 members