The writer remembers his first poll of the Senate on the anti-gambling issue, when only nineteen Senators could be safely counted for it[24]; twenty-one were necessary for its passage. To be sure, a number of the Senators not included in the list of the nineteen who were from the beginning safe for the measure, were pledged to vote for an anti-pool selling bill, but this did not necessarily mean the effective Walker-Otis bill which had been drawn to prevent pool selling and bookmaking. Not a few unquestionably figured on voting for a bill that would place them on record as against racetrack gambling, but do racetrack gambling little or no harm. These uncertain ones were blocked in their plan of action because the proponents of the Anti-Gambling bill knew just what they wanted to do, namely, close up poolrooms and bookmakers' booths. They took the most effective way to close them up, namely, adapted to California Constitution and criminal practice, the Hughes anti-gambling law, the adoption of which Governor Hughes forced in New York, and which in New York State had proved most effective. The bill was drawn carefully and its backers in the Legislature and out of the Legislature let it be known that no amendment, not so much as to change a comma, would be tolerated. The measure was introduced in the Senate by Walker of Santa Clara, and in the Assembly by Otis of Alameda. It was known as the Walker-Otis bill. This determined stand for the passage of the measure just as it had been drawn thoroughly alarmed the gambling lobby. "Reformers" who would not "compromise" proved a new experience. The machine never compromises until it is whipped. Accordingly, when public opinion demanded action on the Walker-Otis bill, the machine Senators began to talk of compromise. In fact, up to the hour of the vote on the bill in the Senate, Senator Wolfe did not stop whining compromise. In his speech against the passage of the bill, just before the final vote was taken he insisted: "There should have been a compromise measure agreed upon, a bill for which we all could have voted." The moment before Wolfe had been warning the Senate that to pass the Walker-Otis bill would tend to wreck the Republican party in California. Just what the Walker-Otis bill had to do with Republican policies Mr. Wolfe would no doubt have difficulty in answering. But the measure did have much to do with machine policies. The machine had prevented the passage of the Anti-Gambling bill two years before, and was prepared to prevent the enactment of an effective anti-gambling law at the session of 1909. Senator Wolfe undoubtedly fell into the common error of mistaking the machine for the Republican party.