Judiciary Committee.

The promoters of the Commonwealth Club bills made the mistake of
treating the machine Senators and Assemblymen as men who could be won
over with reason and plain statement. Instead of fighting for their
bills and demanding their passage, the agents of the club were willing
to listen courteously to suggestions from tricksters intent upon the
defeat of the measures, who were only playing for time.

Carroll Cook was at Sacramento lobbying against the bills, as were
others of that gentleman's view of affairs. Cook actually appeared
before the Assembly Judiciary Committee on invitation of one of its
members. The courtesy shown him by Grove L. Johnson, chairman of the
Committee, was touching or nauseating, as one might view it. Johnson,
who was in effect the Committee, took occasion on the day of Cook's
appearance to denounce the measures as revolutionary, unconstitutional,
vicious.

It is interesting to note that sixty-three of the sixty-five bills as
introduced in the Assembly never got beyond Johnson's Committee. They
died right there. The two exceptions got out of the Committee in the
closing days of the session, one on March 10th, the other on March 20th.
They were reported out with the recommendation that they do pass. It was
then too late to take any action on them. They died on the Assembly
file.

Those who were making a fight for the measures were kept running between
the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly and that of the Senate. The
Senate Committee, while a majority of its members were against the
machine, was led by men who were not at all in sympathy with any plan