e of Representatives, but the
Senate failed to take any action. In August, 1911, the President vetoed
a joint resolution to admit the territories of New Mexico and Arizona as
States into the Union. He stated his attitude as follows: "The
resolution admits both territories to statehood with their constitutions
on condition that at the time of the election of State officers New
Mexico shall submit to its electors an amendment to its new constitution
altering and modifying its provisions for future amendments, and on the
further condition that Arizona shall submit to its electors at the time
of the election of its State officers a proposed amendment to its
constitution by which judicial officers shall be excepted from the
section permitting a recall of all elective officers. If I sign this
joint resolution, I do not see how I can escape responsibility for the
judicial recall of the Arizona constitution. The joint resolution admits
Arizona with the judicial recall, but requires the submission of the
question of its wisdom to the voters. In other words, the resolution
approves the admission of Arizona with the judicial recall, unless the
voters themselves repudiate it. . . . This provision of the Arizona
constitution in its application to county and State judges seems to me
pernicious in its effect, so destructive of independence in the
judiciary, so likely to subject the rights of the individual to the
possible tyranny of a popular majority, and therefore to be so injurious
to the cause of free government that I must disapprove a constitution
containing it."

[Illustration]
Photograph, Copyright, by Clinedinst. Washington.
President Taft signing the proclamation making New Mexico a State,
January 6, 1912.

January 6, 1912, New Mexico, having complied with all conditions, was
formally admitted into the Union as the forty-seventh State.

Arizona, having an area of 113,000 square miles, was organized as a
territory in 1863 and appeared in the federal census reports for the
first time in 1870 with a population of 9,658. From 1870 to 1890 its
growth in population was rapid, increasing a little more than four times
during the decade 1870-1880 and doubling during the succeeding ten
years. The population in 1900 was 122,931 and in 1910 it was 204,354.
During the last decade, therefore, the increase in population has been
66.2 per cent, while the percentage of increase in the United States as
a whole has been only 21 per cent