In the meantime, Grant had introduced his concurrent resolution calling for a legislative commission of five Senators and five Assemblymen to investigate the white slave traffic.335 The Grant resolution was referred to the Senate Committee on Public Morals.

When the Committee on Rules advised the adoption of the Beban resolution Senator Anderson moved that the resolution be referred to the Committee on Public

its findings to the Senate at the earliest practicable date upon the conclusion of such investigation, said committee to have power to summon witnesses, administer oaths, send for papers and books and transcribe the testimony. The Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate shall serve all process issued and required to be served by said committee; said committee may sit at Sacramento or such other places as may be found best suited for the purposes of said investigation, and to have all necessary authority to carry out the full purpose of this resolution. The necessary assistants for such committee shall be assigned from the regular employees of the Senate, who shall receive no additional compensation for their services to said committee, and the incidental expenses to said committee shall be reported to the Senate and shall be paid from the Contingent Fund of the Senate, the total cost of such investigation not to exceed $1,000, which sum is hereby appropriated out of the Contingent Fund of the Senate and the Controller is directed to draw his warrant therefor and the Treasurer is directed to pay the same.

335 The difference in effect between the Beban and the Grant resolution was this:

The Beban resolution provided for an investigation by the Senate only, to be made during the term of the session. If the Assembly wished to take up the same investigation it would be obliged to appoint an independent committee, to make separate inquiry. Such procedure, the history of legislative investigation shows, is neither satisfactory nor practical. In 1903, for example, a Senate committee investigated State Prison scandals, and an Assembly committee conducted a separate and entirely independent investigation into the same scandals. The newspapers reeked with the details of the needless brutality of prison authorities. The public was aroused. But when the investigation was over, the sensation was forgotten, the two-ways-pulling investigators got nowhere and accomplished little or no good.

The committee provided for in the Grant resolution, on the other hand, would have been made up of members from each house. The committee would have had two years for its work. Its findings would have, if adopted, been the findings of the Legislature, and not of one House of the Legislature only.

Assemblyman Bohnett also introduced the resolution Grant had offered in the Senate in the Lower House. The passage of the minimum wage law, however, providing for a commission to inquire into practically the same subject-matter as named in the Grant-Bohnett resolution, made the appointment of the proposed legislative commission unnecessary.

Morals, along with the Grant resolution, that the two might be considered together on their merits.

It was not difficult to see that the first test of strength between those who were supporting Grant in his policy of dealing with the redlight problem, and those who opposed that policy, had come. Finn, Boynton,386 Wright, and Hans, who were counted against the Abatement act, opposed the sending of the Beban resolution to the Public Morals Committee, insisting that immediate action. be taken upon it. On the other hand, Butler, Anderson, Kehoe, and Shanahan, openly for the passage of the Abatement act, spoke for the sending of the resolution to the Public Morals Committee that the Grant resolution might be given equal show with it.

But Beban's supporters won out, defeating Anderson's motion to refer the Beban resolution to the Public Morals Committee, by a vote of thirteen to eighteen.337

336 Senator Boynton's legislative record on moral issues had been quite the reverse of those of the gentlemen whose contentions he supported in this instance. Senator Boynton at previous sessions had led the fight for effective anti-racetrack gambling legislation, Local Option and the like; while Beban and Finn were always in opposition. The assistance which Senator Boynton gave them in this instance, therefore, was the more marked and valuable. Senator Boynton spoke for the immediate adoption of the Beban resolution.

337 The vote by which the Senate refused to send the Beban resolution to the Public Morals Committee was as follows:

To send the Beban resolution to committee-Anderson, Avey, Brown, Butler, Carr, Cogswell, COHN, Gates, Grant, Jones, Kehoe, Mott, and Shanahan-13.

Against sending the Behan resolution to committee-BEBAN, Birdsall, BOYNTON, Breed, BRYANT, CASSIDY, Curtin, FINN, Flint, Gerdes, HANS, JUILLIARD, Larkins, Lyon, Owens, REGAN, Strobridge, and. WRIGHT.-18.

Those whose names are in capital letters later voted against the Grant-Bohnett Redlight Abatement Act.

The Beban resolution was then adopted by a vote of twenty-one to ten.338

In this connection it is interesting to note that nine 339 of the eleven Senators who were later to vote against the Grant-Bohnett Redlight Abatement act, voted against sending the Beban resolution to the Public Morals Committee, while ten of the eleven voted for the immediate adoption of the resolution.310 Cohn, who was to vote against the Abatement act, voted to refer the resolution to committee, but voted in favor of the resolution. Cartwright, who was to vote against the Abatement act, did not participate in the discussion over the two resolutions.

The result was very frankly taken as defeat for those who were advocating the passage of the Abatement act.3 Parliamentary custom-although by no means

341

338 The vote by which the Beban resolution was adopted was as follows:

For the resolution-BEBAN, Birdsall, BOYNTON, Breed, BRYANT, CASSIDY, COHN, Curtin, FINN, Flint, Gates, Gerdes, HANS, JUILLIARD, Larkins, Lyon, Mott, Owens, REGAN, Strobridge, and WRIGHT-21.

Against the resolution-Anderson, Avey, Brown, Butler, Carr, Cogswell, Grant, Jones, Kehoe, and Shanahan-10.

Those whose names are in capital letters later voted against the Grant-Bohnett Redlight Abatement act.

339 Beban, Boynton, Bryant, Cassidy, Finn, Hans, Juilliard, Regan, and Wright-9.

340 Beban, Boynton, Bryant, Cassidy, Cohn, Finn, Hans, Juilliard, Regan, and Wright-10.

341 "Where thirty-six hours ago," wrote George P. West, special legislative representative of the San Francisco Bulletin, in discussing the adoption of the Beban amendment, "even opponents of the Abatement bill were predicting its passage by a big majority, to-day they hope to beat it in the Senate.

"Senator A. E. Boynton, of Oroville and San Francisco, is given much of the credit or blame for the adoption of the Beban resolution. His outspoken opposition to the Abatement bill during the debate encouraged others who before had been awed by the campaign of women's clubs in its favor. Boynton is president pro tem. of the Senate and without doubt the ablest man in either House.

"On the surface there is nothing in Senator Beban's plans for the investigation that would interfere with the passage of the

parliamentary rule-would require President Wallace to appoint the author of the resolution chairman of the committee. This would have placed Beban at the head of the Abatement movement in the Senate.

Although the custom of appointing the author of a resolution chairman of the committee authorized by such resolution is by no means general,342 the cry was at once raised that President Wallace was bound by parliamentary practice to name Beban as chairman. It was the familiar claquer's cry, as insincere as it was clamorous. But a weaker man in the Lieutenant-Governor's office would have been influenced, if not coerced, by it, just as members of both houses on moral and even industrial issues were influenced and coerced. Wallace did not appoint Beban chairman of the committee.343

He did,

Abatement bill. The vote on his resolution is significant only because it was opposed by all the most active champions of the Grant-Bohnett measure. Whether they marshaled their full strength or not on the vote to refer Beban's resolution is a question. At any rate, they lost the first skirmish, and opponents of the bill are now for the first time hopeful of defeating it."

342 At the 1911 session, for example, Senator Shanahan introduced a resolution calling for investigation of matters pertaining to school textbooks. When the committee was appointed, Senator Strobridge was named chairman of the committee. Shanahan was, however, made a member of the committee. "When I failed to receive the chairmanship," said Shanahan, in discussing Beban's complaint of being slighted, "I did not go about complaining that I had been slighted. I went about the work assigned me to the best of my ability."

343 The Lieutenant-Governor's act was approved generally where the facts were known. The misleading accounts of the incident as published in San Francisco newspapers, however, must have worked great confusion in the minds of readers dependent upon these papers for their news. But the interior press gave the Lieutenant-Governor credit for what he had done.

"Lieutenant-Governor Wallace," said the Fresno Republican, in its issue of March 13, 1913, "yesterday turned down Dominick Beban and Senatorial courtesy, both at once, and was well justified in both turndowns. When Beban introduced a resolution calling for the appointment of a certain committee, custom and courtesy dictated that he be made_chairman of that committee. But when it became evident that Beban had not introduced the resolution in good faith, and that his purpose was to sidetrack

however, give Beban membership thereon. Lee C. Gates was made chairman of the committee, with Kehoe, Beban, Butler, and Grant.

Beban protested that he had been unfairly dealt with, and finally withdrew from the committee. Senator Campbell was appointed to fill the vacancy.

The committee made as thorough canvass of the situation as was possible within the limited time at its disposal. It found that the appropriation made for the investigation, and the time allowed were entirely inadequate. The committee recommended the appointment of a legislative committee for the work, to be made up of members of both Houses, or else a commission with like powers of a legislative committee.34

was

moral legislation which he did not dare oppose, the LieutenantGovernor was quite right in defying both custom and courtesy, and packing the committee against the Senator from the Barbary Coast district. The remainder of the Wallace committee composed of absolutely the highest type of men in the Senate. The only 'packing' there was consisted in putting aggressively decent men on a committee to investigate a resolution whose purpose was not in the interest of decency. The result was, of course, that the committee found it physically impossible to carry out Beban's obstructive investigation, but propose a later and constructive one, which shall, however, not in the meantime interfere with the consideration of bills intended to curtail the activities of some of Mr. Beban's constituents.

344 The committee's report was in full as follows:

"Mr. President: Your committee appointed under resolution of March 11, 1913, 'to investigate all phases of the so-called "social evil" or "white slavery" and the relation of the same to the wages of the working women in California, to report its finding to the Senate at the earliest practical date upon the conclusion of such investigation,' begs leave to report as follows:

"That your committee has given thorough and careful consideration to the matter of said resolution and the duties to be performed thereunder; that it is the sense of the committee that it would be impossible even cursorily or perfunctorily to investigate the said 'social evil' or 'white slave traffic' in all its phases: much less to investigate the relationship of said evil and traffic to the wages of the working women in this State, or the relationship of the wages of working women to said 'social evil.'

"That in the opinion of your committee the scope of the resolution is so wide and comprehensive that the time at the disposal of your committee and the appropriation made for such investigation are altogether inadequate to the end to be reached; that