ABSTRACT
One of the principal questions this chapter examines is how the legislatively appointed Senate, corrupted and unresponsive as it was alleged to be, came to endorse a constitutional amendment which placed its elections under direct popular control. The minority report made an even greater concession to popular expediency, recommending that direct elections be adopted "when the people of any State shall so desire", but that the people of no state should be compelled to do so, "if they prefer to retain the present method". The unanimous vote of 1902, for instance, did not record the opinion of abstaining members, and in nearly every session able retorts had been offered on behalf of the status quo. The personal background of the Senate's progressive element, the "insurgents", as some of them called themselves, offers an elementary but generally overlooked truth about the Seventeenth Amendment.
