The reform element, working sixteen hours a day not unlike so many mice in a wheel, were apparently in complete ignorance of the situation which they were creating. Senators whose bills had passed the Senate began to complain that they could not get the measures out of the Assembly committee; Assemblymen whose measures had passed the Assembly were as loud in their charges that their bills were being held up in Senate committees. The machine actually turned this early dissatisfaction to its advantage. Soon it was being announced on the floor of the Assembly: "If Senate committees will not act on Assembly bills, then the Assembly committees will not act on Senate bills." The Senate made the same threats as to Assembly bills. So, for about a week, Senate committees openly slighted Assembly bills, while Assembly committees in retaliation slighted Senate bills. The situation was very amusing; it was, too, highly satisfactory to the machine. About the first week in March - the Legislature adjourned March 24 - the anti-machine members awoke to the fact that in spite of their day and night sessions, little had been accomplished. The further disquieting discovery was made that the bulk of the Assembly bills which had passed the Assembly were being held in Senate committees, while the Senate bills which had passed the Senate, were apparently anchored in Assembly committees, and that the machine controlled the committees. The reform members of each House had good cause for alarm. Every Senator and Assemblyman has his "pet" measures. The reform Senators and Assemblymen found that to get their bills out of committees they would have to treat with the machine. Such a Senator or Assemblyman, with his constituents clamoring for the passage of a bill held up in a machine-controlled committee, had some claim to pardon if he turned suddenly attentive to the machine olive branch. And the machine, by the way, always has the olive branch out. Stand in with us, is their constant advance, and we will see you through. As a result of these delaying tactics, literally hundreds of bills which had needlessly been held up in committees were forced upon the consideration of the Senate during the last three weeks of the session. Each House made records of passing more than 100 bills a day. There was little pretense of reading the measures as required by the State Constitution. The clerk at the desk mumbled over their titles; they were voted upon and became laws. In the rush to get through, as will be shown by example in other chapters, Senators and Assemblymen voted for measures to which they were openly opposed. The machine minority was merely reaping the benefits of a situation which the cleverness of its leaders had created.