mined the convention system, which in some states was even prohibited. From nominations for local officers it spread by 1911 to state officers in two-thirds of the states; and after 1910 began to be applied to the choice of delegates to the national conventions. For a time the system seemed a great success; it opened opportunities to enter public life, and killed off unpopular leaders. An unforeseen effect was that the official ballots were made upon the basis of party nominations, with an opportunity for independent voting. The primary was therefore a public and effective election, which practically brought the party system into the domain of public law, as a part of the Government.
The distrust of conventions and controlled elections extended to the numerous and powerful bosses in city and state Legislatures. Three new devices were set at work to curb them and to interest the electors in public measures. The first of these, the referendum, was by 1909 spreading rapidly through the western states. It was a means of checking legislative action contrary to public sentiment. The system, both in local and state government, can be traced from colonial times; and most 19th century state constitutions were submitted to a popular vote, and also many statutes, if the Legislatures so directed. The referendum system furnished a mechanism, usually imbedded in state constitutions, by which a statute on the demand of a sufficient number of voters could be held back from effect until submitted to a vote of the electors. The state of Oregon was one of the earliest and most thorough-going in this reform.
What was to be done if the Legislature refused to enact a statute demanded by the people? How could this negative force be overcome? By the initiative, through which a designated number of voters could unite on a measure, which must then be submitted to the electors for their suffrages. Both the initiative and referendum were attacked on the ground that they were contrary to republican government, inasmuch as they substituted direct action for representation. The referendum had been so long and widely used that it was hard to make out a case against it. The initiative was based on the general principle that the ultimate source of authority is not the Legislature or any public officer, but the people at large. In a test case (Feb. 1912) the Federal Supreme Court declined to rule that the initiative and referendum were contrary to a “republican form of government”; and no further attempts were made to upset them on constitutional grounds.
A third branch of this system of appeal to the people was the recall, under which a public officer chosen by popular vote, and in a few cases those who were appointed in some other way, could be subjected to an election; and, if the majority decided against them, they would be thereby removed from office. The system began in the far western states and never spread so widely as the other two methods mentioned. In 1911-2 the recall came before Congress in connexion with the proposed constitution of the new state of Arizona, which included a provision for the recall of judges. President Taft vetoed the Act of admission because of this provision. The state therefore withdrew the clause, was duly admitted in 1912, and thereupon proceeded to reinsert the recall. In practice, recalls proved to be few, and recalls of judges very few. A still wider application of the principle of responsibility of functionaries to the voters was the recall of judicial decisions, which was advocated by Roosevelt in 1912 and was applied in one state, Colorado.
Popular elections were applied to the choice of Federal senators, first by an indirect method of pledging members of the Legislature, invented in the state of Oregon. The Senate contained some members who could never have passed the ordeal of popular election, yet were frequently re-elected by the Legislature. The result was the 17th Amendment, submitted by Congress June 12 1912, and added to the Constitution May 31 1913, under which all elections to the Senate from that time were to be made by direct popular vote. Another evidence of a rising feeling of responsibility in Congress was a statute (Aug. 7 1911) requiring candidates for the House and Senate to submit statements of the money raised and expended in their behalf and limiting the amount that they might themselves spend. One purpose of both these measures was to make it difficult for men to purchase their way into the Senate. On July 13 1912 Senator Lorimer of Illinois was practically expelled from the U.S. Senate for buying legislative votes.
Experience has shown that the load of responsibility placed upon the voters by these new measures was sometimes more than they were willing to bear. The scanty primary votes, and the inattention to some of the referendum and initiative questions put on the ballots, were seized upon as showing that the voter was interested only in men. On the other hand, the ballots of most cities, towns and states were loaded down with long lists of officers to be chosen at each election, so that the “vote for men” was in many cases a vote in the dark. The result was an agitation for the reform commonly known as the “short ballot,” by reducing the number of elective officers and increasing the officers to be appointed by the few elective officials. Working difficulties were found in many of these reforms, and it was hard to keep the public keyed up to the necessary pitch of thought and attention at every election. It was evident, however, that the American people intended to free themselves from the shackles of what Elihu Root styled “invisible government.”
Social Questions.—The spirit of discontent extended to many questions outside of politics. Throughout Taft's administration there was an increasing pressure for “equal suffrage” that is, woman suffrage which was introduced in the territory of Wyoming in 1869, gradually spread among the far western states, and then worked its way eastward. Inasmuch as the voters for the more numerous branch of the state Legislature are also voters for members of Congress and for presidential electors, women began to take part in national affairs, and one of them was a delegate in the Republican National Convention of 1908. As the number of suffrage states increased, it was natural to look forward to a constitutional amendment which would abolish sex distinction for voting and indirectly for office-holding.
Both state and national Governments were compelled to deal with the question of alcoholic beverages. From the earliest times there had been some restriction on liquor selling and liquor sellers as well as punishment for undue use of intoxicants. By 1909 in almost all states there was some form of general legal restriction: prohibition or local option or high licence or a state dispensary system. These laws were enforced more or less strictly within the state or communities to which they applied. The question became national, however, because the liquor trade transported its wares from one state to another; and that brought it within the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution and the Interstate Commerce Act. There was a long, running fight between the opponents of the liquor trade, Congress, the state Legislatures, and the Federal courts, which finally passed upon the validity of various Acts passed by the Federal Government regulating transportation. Eventually Congress adopted the policy, by the Original Package Act of 1890, of prohibiting shipments of liquor into prohibition states; and this law sustained the test of the U.S. Supreme Court. Pure food laws in force before 1909 were supplemented by the Drug Label Act (Aug. 23 1912), which greatly aided in preventing the adulteration of drugs.
Many questions arose out of immigration. The laws forbade the entry of labourers under a contract to work in the United States, of convicts, insane persons, and (after 1907) diseased persons; but the execution of such laws was slack. The first statute looking toward decided control of immigration was that of Feb. 1907, which increased the grounds of exclusion, and at the same time provided a plan to help the immigrants to find work. It also created an Immigration Commission, which in 1910 made a report in 41 volumes, strongly recommending the sifting of immigrants by testing their ability to read and write some language; but bills to that effect were twice vetoed by President Taft. Meanwhile, the number of immigrants rose in the decade 1901-10 to an average of a million a year. New machinery for registering departures brought out the fact that from 300,000 to 500,000 annually returned to their old homes, so that the rate of increase of population by immigration was no larger than it
