The Constitutional Convention of 1902

A second era of agitation over the constitutional standing of the Fundamental Orders came in the late nineteenth century when industrial urbanization called forth the Progressive thrust for reform. The particular issue that agitated political argument in Connecticut was the malapportionment of the legislature resulting from nineteenth-century urbanization. All factions recognized the injustice of the matter, and both Republicans and Democrats called for adjustments. The document written in the Constitutional Convention of 1902 was rejected by the people, however, and Connecticut continued her rotten borough system, under which in 1900, Union's 428 people carried as much weight in the House as did New Haven's 108,027.

Call for reform was presented by Henry C. Robinson in "Constitutional Reform in Connecticut" Yale Law Journal 3(December, 1893/4)2:41-44. Robinson attempted to counter the Democrats' demand for a constitutional convention on the grounds that amendment of the existing document--that of 1818--was the only constitutional way to alter the system of government. He did agree with the Democrats that equality of town representation was not necessarily carved in the stone of the Orders or the Charter and that the Fundamental Orders were the act of the people, not of the towns. The forces fighting to maintain the status quo with each town represented equally regardless of population, found a spokesman in Roger Welles in "Constitutional History of Connecticut" Connecticut Magazine 5(1899)2:86-93, 3:159-62. Proportional representation, Welles claimed would bring government by "the saloon and the machine." Several other interesting, though partisan, discussions throw considerable light along with their heat on the battle of the 1890s. Malben B. Cary's The Connecticut Constitution (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1900) is an analysis of the government with recommendations for revision. Cary becomes polemical toward the end and includes, in an appendix, long quotations from newspaper editorials. More soberly, on the eve of the Convention, he wrote "The Connecticut Constitution, 1900, and the Struggle for Reform," Yale Law Journal l0(January, 1902):73-79.

There is no good published account of the Constitutional struggle of the 1890s, though twenty-three years after the event John H. Perry, first vice-president of the Convention, wrote a serviceable narrative, "Constitutional Convention of 1902," in vol. I of Norris Galpin Osborn ed., History of Connecticut in Monographic Form (New York: The States History Company, 1925). Perry's account is the least politically partisan discussion, perhaps because he wrote two decades after the event but he is, of course, strongly in favor of the document he helped write and saddened at the lack of public interest. There is also an excellent doctoral dissertation that covers the politics of the era, Frederick Morrison Heath's "Politics and Steady Habits: Issues and Elections in Connecticut 1894-1914," Columbia University, 1965. Heath does not focus on the constitutional issues, however. A journalistic account was published in the Yale Review 11(August, 1902) by C. H. Clark "The Connecticut Convention of 1902." See also Frank Putnam, "What is the Matter with New England: Connecticut the State Ruled by its Uninhabited Towns," New England Magazine 37(November, 1907)3:267- 77.

Moran, Antonia C. "The Period of Peaceful Anarchy: Constitutional Impasse: 1890-1892," Connecticut History 29 (October 1988). The election of 1890 was stolen by the Republicans -- clearly in the case of the under tickets, probably in the case of the governor. But public perception of the power grabbing politics involved led to the constitutional amendment that did away with the rule requiring a majority vote to elect state officers, and permitted plurality election.