It required twenty-one years to secure the amendment providing for popular election of United States Senators after the amendment was first endorsed by the House of Representatives at Washington.  For one hundred and three years after the adoption of the Federal Constitution the people tolerated the election of Senators by legislatures before there was a protest that rose to the dignity of a Congressional resolution.  A Republican President, Andrew Johnson, recommended the change in a message to Congress.  Some ten years later, General Weaver, a Populist Representative in Congress from Iowa, introduced a resolution proposing an amendment providing for the popular election of Senators, but no action was taken at that time.  In 1902 a Democratic House of Representatives at Washington passed a resolution, by the necessary two-thirds vote, submitting the proposed amendment.  Hon. Harry St. George Tucker, of Virginia, was the chairman of the committee when this resolution passed the House.  A similar resolution passed the House on five separate occasions afterward (twice when the House was Democratic and three times when it was Republican) before it could pass the Senate.  The amendment was finally submitted by joint action of a Democratic House and a Republican Senate and was ratified in a short time, Democratic and Republican states vying with each other in furnishing the necessary number.  In 1913 it became my privilege, as Secretary of State, to sign the last document necessary to make this amendment a part of the Constitution.  I have dwelt upon this contest at some length in order to call attention to the time it took to secure the change and to the fact that the two parties share the honour of making the change.

It took seventeen years to secure the amendment to the Constitution authorizing an income tax.  The Income Tax Law, enacted in 1894, was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, by a majority of one, in 1895.  In 1896 the fight for a constitutional amendment was inaugurated and the amendment was ratified and became a part of the Constitution early in 1913.  This amendment, like the amendment providing for popular election of United States Senators, required many years, and for the same reason, viz., that the people were not alert as they should have been, not as vigilant as they should be.  In the case of the Income Tax Amendment also, as in the case of the other, the two parties contributed to the change in the Constitution and share the glory together.  The first amendment brought the United States Senate nearer the people and opened the way for other reforms; the second made it possible to apportion more equitably the burdens of the government.

The Income Tax Amendment was adopted just in time to enable the government to collect the revenue needed for the recent war.  During the seventeen years covered by the struggle for this amendment the government was impotent to tax wealth; it could draft the man but not the pocketbook.  What would have been the feeling among the people if we had entered the late war under such a handicap?  How would conscription have been received if it applied to father, husband and son and not to wealth also?