the Measure Into a Committee on Free Conference With Power to Amend.



It is a very good rule to be sure that your rattlesnake is dead before
placing yourself in a position to be bitten. The reform Senators
neglected this rule, with the result that after they had the machine
element whipped on the direct primary issue, they placed themselves in
a position where the "performers" struck at them viciously, and snatched
victory from them.

As was shown in a previous chapter, the Direct Primary bill, after it
had originally passed the Senate in the face of machine opposition, was
allowed to go to the Assembly containing several serious clerical and
typographical errors. The Assembly corrected these errors by a series of
ten amendments. It was necessary for the Senate to concur in these
amendments to get the bill into proper form. The amendments added in the
Assembly to which the anti-machine Senators took exception, were seven
in number and dealt principally with the changing of the method of
electing United States Senators, from the plan of State-wide vote, to
that of district, advisory vote. The seven were known as the "vicious
amendments"; the ten correcting the typographical errors were called the
"necessary amendments." There is no good reason why the ten necessary
amendments should not have been made before the bill was first sent to
the Assembly. But they were not, and the errors which were thus left in
the bill served the machine most advantageously when the final fight
came. After Wolfe had given up hope of compelling the reform Senators to
concur in the vicious amendments read into the bill in the Assembly, his
play was to bring about a situation by which the bill would be thrown
into a Committee on Free Conference. The committee would be appointed by