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