The Direct Primary.-In connection with the uprising against machine poli-tics,came a call for the abolition of the old method of nominating candidates by conventions.These time-honored party assemblies,which had come down fromthe days of Andrew Jackson,were,it was said,merely conclaves of party work-ers,sustained by the spoils system,and dominated by an inner circle of bosses.The remedy offered in this case was again "more democracy,"namely,the aboli-tion of the party convention and the adoption of the direct primary.Candidates were no longer to be chosen by secret conferences.Any member of a party was to be allowed to run for any office,to present his name to his party by secur-ing signatures to a petition,and to submit his candidacy to his fellow partisans at a direct primary-an election within the party.In this movement Governor La Follette of Wisconsin took the lead and his state was the first in the union to adopt the direct primary for state-wide purposes.The idea spread,rapidly in the West,more slowly in the East.The public,already angered against "the bosses,"grasped eagerly at it.Governor Hughes in New York pressed it upon the unwilling legislature.State after state accepted it until by 1918Rhode Is-land,Delaware,Connecticut,and New Mexico were the only states that had not bowed to the storm.Still the results were disappointing and at that very time the pendulum was beginning to swing backward.
Popular Election of Federal Senators.-While the movement for direct primaries was still advancing everywhere,a demand for the popular election of Senators,usually associated with it,swept forward to victory.Under the origi-nal Constitution,it had been expressly provided that Senators should be chosen by the legislatures of the states.In practice this rule transferred the selection of Senators to secret caucuses of party members in the state legislatures.In con-nection with these caucuses there had been many scandals,some direct proofs of brazen bribery and corruption,and dark hints besides.The Senate was called by its detractors "a millionaires'club"and it was looked upon as the "citadel of conservatism."The preion in this case was likewise "more democracy"-direct election of Senators by popular vote.
This reform was not a new idea.It had been proposed in Congress as early as 1826.President Johnson,an ardent advocate,made it the subject of a special message in 1868Not long afterward it appeared in Congress.At last in 1893,the year after the great Populist upheaval,the House of Representatives by the requisite two-thirds vote incorporated it in an amendment to the federal Constitution.Again and again it passed the House;but the Senate itself was obdurate.Able Senators leveled their batteries against it.Mr.Hoar of Massachusetts declared that it would transfer the seat of power to the "great cities and masses of population";that it would "overthrow the whole scheme of the Senate and in the end the whole scheme of the national Constitution as designed and established by the framers of the Constitution and the people who adopted it."
Failing in the Senate,advocates of popular election made a rear assaultthrough the states.They induced state legislatures to enact laws requiring the nomination of candidates for the Senate by the direct primary,and then they bound the legislatures to abide by the popular choice.Nevada took the lead in 1899.Shortly afterward Oregon,by the use of the initiative and referendum,practically bound legislators to accept the popular nominee and the country witnessed the spectacle of a Republican legislature "electing"a Democrat to represent the state in the Senate at Washington.By 1910three-fourths of the states had applied the direct primary in some form to the choice of Senators.Men selected by that method began to pour in upon the floors of Congress;finally in 1912the two-thirds majority was secured for an amendment to the federal Constitution providing for the popular election of Senators.It was quickly ratified by the states.The following year it was proclaimed in effect.
The Initiative and Referendum.-As a corrective for the evils which had grown up in state legislatures there arose a demand for the introduction of a Swiss device known as the initiative and referendum.The initiative permits any one to draw up a proposed bill;and,on securing a certain number of signatures among the voters,to require the submission of the measure to the people at an election.If the bill thus initiated receives a sufficient majority,it becomes a law.The referendum allows citizens who disapprove any act passed by the legislature to get up a petition against it and thus bring about a reference of the measure to the voters at the polls for approval or rejection.These two practices constitute a form of "direct government."
These devices were prescribed "to restore the government to the people."The Populists favored them in their platform of 1896.Mr.Bryan,two years later,made them a part of his program,and in the same year South Dakota adopted them.In 1902Oregon,after a strenuous campaign,added a direct legislation amendment to the state constitution.Within ten years all the Southwestern,Mountain,and Pacific states,except Texas and Wyoming,had followed this example.To the east of the Mississippi,however,direct legislation met a chilly reception.By 1920only five states in this section had accepted it:Maine,Massachusetts,Ohio,Michigan,and Maryland,the last approving the referendum only.