lay until March 13th, two months and five days, when the proponents of
the measure, realizing that they were being tricked, made their protest
so loud that the measure was reported by the Committee, but without
recommendation. There was no time then to pass the bill, and on March
15th it was withdrawn by its author.

The Estudillo bill, as it was known on the Senate side of the Capitol,
had a more eventful history. Introduced in the Senate on January 8th, it
had gone to the famous Committee on Election Laws, which had been
stacked for the defeat of the Direct Primary bill. Estudillo was, to be
sure, Chairman of the Committee, but a lamb herding lions never had a
harder job on its hands than did Estudillo. He could not get his
committee together to consider the well-backed Direct Primary bill, let
alone the worthy but not politically supported local option measure.

Along about the middle of February, however, Estudillo succeeded in
getting the committee to act. By a vote of four to four the committee
refused to recommend the Local Option bill for passage. Senator Stetson,
who favored the passage of the measure, to compel committee action and
get the bill before the Senate, thereupon moved that the bill be
referred back to the Senate with recommendation that it do not pass.
Senator Stetson's motion prevailed.

Thus, the measure went back to the Senate with a majority committee
report that it do not pass. But in spite of this adverse report, the
Senate passed the measure on second reading and sent it to engrossment
and third reading. It looked very much just then as though the bill
would pass the Senate.

But the resourceful machine had other plans. When the measure came up