The Assembly during the two months of its existence passed 152 laws, many of which were local, many personal relief bills.[143] There was beginning to be apparent that tendency to vest autocratic power in the hands of the governor, which reached, as we shall see, such a culmination in the next session. In some instances, it is true, the propositions could not muster sufficient strength to pass the Assembly, but it is significant that such propositions could be offered as Ray’s amendment to the charter bill for New Orleans, which suggested vesting in the Governor power to appoint the first mayor and council until the election in 1872, and the amendment to the volunteer militia bill, which left to him large discretionary powers.[144] The act which prohibited the mayor of New Orleans from exercising any police duty or authority is equivalent to an enlargement of the governor’s powers, for the body with such control, the metropolitan police, was virtually his servant through his appointive power.[145] Quite as important was the negative action of the Assembly in refusing to force the governor to order elections in certain cases where for political reasons he was leaving vacancies.[146] One group of laws attempted to deal with the race and labor questions. A vagrancy law, which finally overcame the hostile majority in the Senate, while not so severe as those of the “Black Code,” did still define rather narrowly and imposed heavy penalties.[147] This stringency arose, at least largely, from the need of labor and devotion to the crops to which economic conditions forced the planters.[148] A measure to organize a Bureau of Immigration was passed, appropriating $20,000 to secure a share in the foreign labor which they saw flooding the North. Unfortunately, this did not solve the labor problem, and dissatisfaction with the Bureau,[149] and especially with its carpet-bagger chief, J. O. Noyes, was loudly voiced in the session of 1870. Efforts to secure new workers by legislation continued throughout the next session. A bill to accord negroes equal civil rights had been up in the session of 1868 but had not been signed by the governor, who was forced to explain to a body of their race assembled en masse, February 4, 1869, his reasons for not doing so.[150] And Pinchback’s civil rights bill, which forbade common carriers and places of public resort to discriminate on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,[151] came up as unfinished business from the preceding session. As was to be expected, feeling ran high and lengthy discussion resulted, usually of a serious character. Twenty-six Senators were reported as desirous of speaking on the bill. Pinchback in debate made use of the expression “refused a drink of common whiskey in a common grog-shop,” which was seized on by the conservative press as a convenient whip. The cry of the Conservatives was that the colored people had too much sense to force themselves where they were not