Failing in the Senate, advocates of popular election made a rear assault through 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 1910 three-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 1912 the 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 1902 Oregon, 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 1920 only five states in this section had accepted it:  Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland, the last approving the referendum only.

=The Recall.=—­Executive officers and judges, as well as legislatures, had come in for their share of criticism, and it was proposed that they should likewise be subjected to a closer scrutiny by the public.  For this purpose there was advanced a scheme known as the recall—­which permitted a certain percentage of the voters to compel any officer, at any time during his term, to go before the people at a new election.  This feature of direct government, tried out first in the city of Los Angeles, was extended