timber and set up their log cabins as forerunners of a future civilization. Scarcely can there be found in the extent of the continent a locality full of such romantic interest as the Valley of the Mississippi River.

On Friday morning Governor Cummins was present and introduced Judge Emlin McClain of the Supreme Court of Iowa, who delivered an address upon The Constitutional Convention and the Issues Before It. He told the story of the gathering of the thirty-six men at the old stone Capitol fifty years ago, and outlined their discussions of the provisions of the fundamental law. He showed that although elected on a party basis, the delegates did not conduct their proceedings in a partisan spirit, but met every issue in a spirit of fairness and decided it according to its merits. History has shown that they did their work well. Only four times has the Constitution been amended, and these changes have been in matters of detail rather than in principles of a general nature.

Friday's program closed the celebration. Perhaps the most unique feature of the exercises was the presence of three aged pioneers of the State, survivors from each of the three Constitutional Conventions. Three times in Iowa have delegates gathered together to frame a Constitution for the State. The first was in 1844, the second in 1846, and the third in 1857. All of these conventions met in the old stone Capitol in Iowa City. The members of the Convention of 1857 at the end of twenty-five years held a reunion in Des Moines at which twenty responded to the roll-call. But now that another twenty-five years has passed, they are no longer able to reunite, for as far as can be learned only one member is alive. John H. Peters, a lawyer from Manchester, had served in the Convention of 1857. He had been unable to attend the reunion of 1882, but when in 1907 the fiftieth anniversary of the Constitution he had helped to frame was being celebrated he appeared upon the scene. And although he was the only member from that convention, he found at Iowa City two men older than himself, who had come with like motives. One was J. Scott Richman of Muscatine, who

had served as a member of the Convention of 1846 which drafted the Constitution under which Iowa was admitted into the Union. The other was Samuel W. Durham, the only survivor of that oldest of all the conventions of Iowa, the Constitutional Convention of 1844. Tall in figure and clear of memory in spite of his ninety years, this pioneer settler told of the early days of the commonwealth. He said of J. Scott Richman, his colleague, as he called him, that in all his life, from the time he first knew him in 1840 down to the present time, he never made an enemy. All three men spoke at the luncheon Friday noon. They talked modestly of the conventions in which they had served, and told of men who have long since passed away of Judge Charles Mason, and Joseph Williams and Thomas Wilson, the Judges who were appointed at the organization of the Territory of Iowa. It was J. Scott Richman in particular who remembered these men, for he had come to Iowa in 1839. The next year Samuel Durham reached the Territory, in the days when the first Governor was administering the government.

No one who attended the celebration will soon forget these three venerable figures. They came together, each one as the last of his group. It is perhaps safe to say that never again will the three gather together at a celebration, but though these pioneer constitution-makers must soon be beyond our ken, they have written their services into the enduring form of the fundamental law of the State of Iowa.

J. C. P.

THE CONSTITUTION OF 1857 AND THE PEOPLE.

The efficiency of laws or institutions, as of houses or shoes, is found largely, if not wholly, in the answers to the prosaic questions, "Are they comfortable and fit? Do they endure the wear and tear of life, and suffice?" If the people abide therewith contentedly, they then satisfy; at least the people so seem to think, and this is the important fact in an orderly society and a stable State.

On September 6, 1907, fifty years will have passed since Gov. James W. Grimes by proclamation declared the present Constitution of Iowa the supreme statute of this midland commonwealth. The instrument was drafted by thirty-six delegates who sat in convention in the old stone Capitol at Iowa City from January 19 to March 5, 1857. Excepting the subject of banks and corporations, the draft submitted to the suffrage of the people was chiefly a revision and enlargement of the Constitution adopted in 1846 upon the admission of Iowa to statehood, an instrument that was mainly agreed upon in 1844. The first Constitution was adopted under protest-the majority for it being only 456 out of a total of 18,528 votes. The keen popular desire to secure statehood was probably the chief fact that prevented its rejection. The absolute prohibition of banks of note issue and sundry limitations upon corporate enterprises, then matters of transcendental local interest in the rapid commercial expansion of the ambitious cities and counties of the State, caused immediate and continuously increasing agitation for revision that should strike "the fetters from the limbs of the young giant." The opposition to the Constitution submitted to the people in 1857 and voted on August 3d was nevertheless decided and vigorous: out of a vote of 78,992 the majority for it was only 1,631. Few of the anticipations of the critics and opponents have been realized, while the predictions of its advocates have been largely fulfilled.

Speaking generally, the Constitution has undergone no material changes in the half century it has been in force. The civil war and national legislation incident to Reconstruction caused in 1868 and in 1880 the extension of the franchise and political privileges. Various amendments affecting elections, judicial districts, grand juries and county attorneys were made in 1884. Biennial instead of annual elections were provided for by amendment in 1904, and at the same time the membership of the House of Representatives was increased so as to give each county at least one representative. Two amendments proposed, viz., the one endorsed by a large popular vote at a special election in June, 1882, providing for the prohibition of the manufacture and sale

as a beverage of "any intoxicating liquors whatever, including ale, wine and beer," and the proposal for biennial elections submitted to the people in 1900, were declared invalid by the Supreme Court on account of serious disregard of mandatory provisions in the Constitution prescribing the method of procedure in the submission of such amendments.

All of the amendments enacted relate to executory or administrative matters, the first two being made necessary by reason of national legislation, and those of 1884 and 1904 being alterations in local administration and the method of conducting elections. In one instance only was a radical change in the policy of the State proposed, viz., in the amendment supposed to have been adopted in 1882 prohibiting the manufacture and use of alcoholic liquors as beverages.

The provisions of Article IX, providing for the establishment of a central Board of Education that should exercise both legislative and executive powers with respect to all of the educational agencies of the State, were eliminated or rendered inoperative by legislative act in 1864, the article itself making the General Assembly competent to abandon the plan authorized. While the act discontinuing the Board was not, strictly speaking, an amendment of the Constitution, it was a quasi amendment that materially modified the administrative machinery of the State government prescribed and provided for in that instrument.

The number and character of the amendments actually adopted indicate very decidedly that notwithstanding the evident doubt and distrust as to the wisdom of ratifying the draft submitted in 1857 as indicated by the narrow majority in its favor, the people have lived contentedly under the provisions of the present Constitution. Another fact enforces this conclusion. By the provisions of Section 3 of Article X, the General Assembly may at any time and in the last year of each decennial period shall submit to the people the proposition of calling a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of amending and revising the Constitution. Four times, viz., 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900, the people have voted upon the matter, and on each occasion the re

turns have shown an adverse public opinion. The result in 1900 was exceedingly interesting and instructive. The first amendment providing for biennial elections was submitted to the people that year-a subject that aroused an ardent discussion pro and con. The simultaneous submission of that amendment and the call for a Constitutional Convention produced not a little confusion in the minds of voters. Friends of the amendment to establish biennial elections in great numbers labored under the notion that it was necessary to vote for a convention in order to insure the success of the electoral reform. The result was that the proposal for calling a convention was negatived by only 555 votes out of a total vote of 353,229. Owing to some errors in the footings of the returns it was first given out unofficially that the call for a convention had carried. When later corrections reversed the majority there was manifest relief throughout the State-as the people seemed to be of the opinion that the returns were the result of confusion and not indicative of a positive demand for serious changes in the constitution of the State.

This acquiescence of the people under their constitution adopted so hesitatingly fifty years ago is strikingly shown if we examine the ratios of votes for and against change and the aggregate thereof compared with the total vote cast by the people in selecting officers for their national or State government at the general election of the same year. In no instance was the vote for an amendment unanimous ; in one case it was 85 per cent. of the total vote cast therefor, in another 62 per cent.; in all others the vote for the proposition did not exceed 56 per cent. The adverse votes on all amendments arousing great public interest viz., negro suffrage, prohibition, and biennial elections, have ranged from 44 to 47 per cent. of the total votes. The affirmative votes for a call for a convention was only 23 per cent. in 1870; 45 per cent. in 1880; but 14 per cent. in 1890; and 49 per cent. in 1900. The total votes cast for proposed amendments in no case equaled the aggregate vote cast at the general election of the same year. In 1868 the vote for and against the inclusion of negroes in the electoral franchise