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Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 by Franklin Hichborn
page 52 of 366 (14%)
until it is whipped. Accordingly, when public opinion demanded action on
the Walker-Otis bill, the machine Senators began to talk of compromise.
In fact, up to the hour of the vote on the bill in the Senate, Senator
Wolfe did not stop whining compromise. In his speech against the passage
of the bill, just before the final vote was taken he insisted: "There
should have been a compromise measure agreed upon, a bill for which we
all could have voted."

The moment before Wolfe had been warning the Senate that to pass the
Walker-Otis bill would tend to wreck the Republican party in California.
Just what the Walker-Otis bill had to do with Republican policies Mr.
Wolfe would no doubt have difficulty in answering. But the measure did
have much to do with machine policies. The machine had prevented the
passage of the Anti-Gambling bill two years before, and was prepared to
prevent the enactment of an effective anti-gambling law at the session
of 1909. Senator Wolfe undoubtedly fell into the common error of
mistaking the machine for the Republican party.

However, the spirit of no compromise which gave Senator Wolfe so much
concern saved the Walker-Otis bill, and has given California an
effective law. The lesson of the incident is that if effective laws are
to be placed on the statute books, there can be no compromise with the
machine. There was compromise with the machine in the direct primary
issue, with the result that the Direct Primary law is in many respects a
sham. But that is another story to be told in another chapter. The
anti-machine element did not compromise with the machine on the
Walker-Otis bill, with the result that an effective law was passed.

From the beginning, the anti-gambling element let it be known that no
suggestion of compromise would be entertained. They announced boldly
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