CHAPTER XI
THE REVIVAL OF DISSENT
On the morning of March 4, 1901, when Mr. McKinley took the oath of office to succeed himself as President, it appeared to the superficial observer that the Populist movement had spent its strength and disappeared. Such was the common remark of the time. To discredit a new proposition it was only necessary to observe that it was as dead as Populism. Twice had the country repudiated Mr. Bryan and his works, the second time even more emphatically than the first; and the radical ideas which had been associated with his name, often quite erroneously, seemed to be permanently laid to rest. The country was prosperous; it congratulated itself on the successful outcome of the war with Spain and accepted the imperialist policies which followed with evident satisfaction. Industries under the protection of the Dingley Act and undisturbed by threats of legislative interference went forward with renewed vigor. Capital began to reach out for foreign markets and investments as never before. Statesmen of Mr. Hanna's school looked upon their work and pronounced it good.
But Populism was not dead. Defeated in the field of national politics, it began to work from the ground upward, attacking one piece of political machinery after another and pressing upon unwilling state legislatures new forms of agrarian legislation. The People's party, at its convention in 1896, had declared in favor of "a system of direct legislation through the initiative and referendum, under proper constitutional safeguards"; and Mr. Bryan two years later announced his belief in the system, saying: "The principle of the initiative and referendum is democratic. It will not be opposed by any Democrat who indorses the declaration of Jefferson that the people are capable of self-government; nor will it be opposed by any Republican who holds to Lincoln's idea that this should be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."[70]
The first victory of "direct democracy" came in the very year of Mr. Bryan's memorable defeat. In 1896, the legislature of South Dakota was captured by a Democratic-Populist majority, and at the session beginning in the following January, it passed an amendment to the state constitution, establishing a system of initiative and referendum. Some leaders of the old Knights of Labor and the president of the Farmers' Alliance were prominently identified with the campaign for this innovation. The resolution was "passed by a strict party vote, and to the Populists is due the credit of passing it," reported "The Direct Legislation Record" in June, 1897. In the contest over ratification at the polls a party division ensued. The Democratic state convention in 1898 adopted a plank favoring direct legislation, on "the principle that the people should rule"; and the Republicans contented themselves with urging party members "to study the legislative initiative and referendum." At the ensuing election the amendment was carried by a vote of 23,876 to 16,483; but ten years elapsed before any use was made of the new device.[71]
A cloud no bigger than a man's hand had appeared on the horizon of representative government. East, West, North, and South, advocates of direct government were busy with their propaganda, Populists and Democrats taking the lead, with Republican politicians not far in the rear. The year following the adoption of the South Dakota amendment a combination of Democrats and Populists carried a similar provision through the state legislature of Utah and obtained its ratification in 1900. This victory was a short-lived triumph, for the Republicans soon regained their ascendancy and stopped the progress of direct legislation by refusing to enact the enabling law putting the amendment into force. But this check in Utah did not dampen the ardor of reformers in other commonwealths. In 1902, Oregon adopted the new system; four years later Montana followed; in 1907, Oklahoma came into the Union with the device embodied in the Constitution; and then the progress of the movement became remarkably rapid. It was adopted by Missouri and Maine in 1908, Arkansas and Colorado in 1910, Arizona and California in 1911, Washington, Nebraska, Idaho, and Ohio in 1912. By this time Populists and Democrats had ceased to monopolize the agitation for direct government; it had become respectable, even in somewhat conservative Republican circles.
It should be pointed out, however, that there is a conservative and a radical system of initiative and referendum: one which fixes the percentage necessary to initiate and adopt a measure at a point so high as to prevent its actual operation, and another which places it so low as to make its frequent use feasible. The older and more radical group of propagandists, finding their general scheme so widely taken up in practical politics, soon began to devote their attention rather to attacking the stricter safeguards thrown up by those who gave their support to direct government in theory only.
In its simple form of initiation by five per cent of the voters and adoption by a majority of those voting on the measure submitted, this new device was undoubtedly a revolutionary change from the American system of government as conceived by the framers of the Constitution of the United States—with its checks and balances, indirect elections, and judicial control over legislation. The more radical of the advocates of direct government frankly admitted that this was true, and they sought to strengthen this very feature of their system by the addition of another device, known as the recall, which, when applied to judges as well as other elective officers, reduced judicial control over legislation to a practical nullity. Where judges are elected for short terms by popular vote and made subject to the recall, and where laws are made by popular vote of the same electors who choose the judges, it is obvious that the very foundations of judicial supremacy are undermined.