from the beginning to the end of the session, voted for the bill. The
negative vote of any two of them would have defeated it[76].

The passage in the Assembly of an important reform measure as late as
March 13, would have meant its defeat in the Senate. Though in the
majority the anti-machine Senators could not have forced a reform
measure through the machine-controlled committees, machine-controlled
even when a majority of a committee was anti-machine[77]. Measures of
the Change of Venue bill stamp, however, had a clear way. The Change of
Venue bill was on March 15 referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On March 16, twenty-four hours after, the Committee returned the bill
with the recommendation that it do pass. On March 19, with twenty-two
Senators opposed to its passage, and eighteen favoring it, with
twenty-one votes necessary for its passage, the bill passed the Senate.
This apparently impossible feat was, in the last two weeks of the
session, a comparatively easy task for the machine.

To begin with, Senator Black, who opposed the bill, was ill at his home
at Palo Alto. This left twenty-one Senators against the measure and
eighteen for. The line-up was as follows:

For the Change of Venue bill - Anthony, Bates, Bills, Finn, Hare,
Hartman, Hurd, Leavitt, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage,
Weed, Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 18.

Against the Change of Venue bill - Bell, Birdsall, Boynton,
Burnett[76a], Caminetti, Campbell, Cartwright, Curtin, Cutten,
Estudillo, Holohan, Lewis, Kennedy, Miller, Roseberry, Rush, Sanford,
Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson, Walker - 21.