Thanks again. What was the motivation behind the 17th amendment to begin with? Why did the states go along with it?
There's an excellent article on the subject
here. Here's the short answer: The 17th Amendment was backed by the Progressives and the left wing of the Republican Party (such as "The Bull Moose," Teddy Roosevelt) to "end the dominance of party 'bosses' and the state 'machines,' stamp out the undue influence of special interests in the Senate, make it more responsive to the will of the people, and of course, eliminate, or greatly reduce, the execrable practice of spending large sums of money to get elected." I'll leave it to you to draw parallels between that and Shays-Meehan. ;-)