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Thanks for the guidance, as ever.

I think Prof. Z is on to something here regarding corruption. The Senate history link you gave says that "Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906." Honestly, that's not very many. I happen to know that from 1906 to 1912, there was one bribery cae brought (and three were from 1904-1906; therefore from 1866 to 1904, there were six). I would surmise that corruption has morphed into different channels. I can't say for sure, but humans are humans, and Democrats are Democrats.

I'm sorry I missed the other thread. I recall bumping it for later reading that I never caught. Anyway, to increase the representation in the House wouldn't change the delilatory effect of the 17th. The House is a Federal office; the Senate is intended as a State office. Don't matter how many Congressitters there are if the Senate is a Federal slave as well. Besides, having more Congressmen will only increase the value of individual controllers of minority-run elections. A population increase in the House would only result in more incumbants with more job security than ever.

You are correct to assert that State legislatures were unfairly balanced towards rural districts. But that problem had been corrected by the time the 17th was enacted. In that sense, the amendment was a solution to a problem that was already resolved. Didn't Robert LaFollette, Hiram Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson succeed in their reforms in their States before its enactment? That is, hadn't the railroads already succombed to normal politics?

That Senate history link reads like Hofstadter's "Age of Reform." The most interesting thing to note, aside from the fact that Dr. Z is wrong, and that it was essentially a Populist Party measure, is that the House capitulated in 1912, an election year. That particular election year featured our dear friend, T. Roosevelt, who was mouthing off about direct democracy. He was wrong, and the 17th Amendment is still wrong.

You correctly note that the only Senators to have gone directly from the Senate to the White House came after the 17th. Certainly, but that's only a reflection of the changed nature of a Senator than of the purpose of the Senate. You couldn't have put it better than, "On the other hand, we wouldn't have so many Senators clamoring for television time and scheming to become President." Lol!

Your post is full of and demanding of thought. Thanks.

And, "Down with the 17th!" (and if it makes Huck happy, take it away from the chicks, too).

You are correct to assert that State legislatures were unfairly balanced towards rural districts. But that problem had been corrected by the time the 17th was enacted.

That brings up an interesting question. It seems like reapportionment was something that ought to have been on LaFollette's mind. But the big Supreme Court reapportionment case (Baker v. Carr, 1962) didn't come up until three generations later. Until then, the constitutions of states like Georgia, Tennessee and Connecticut apportioned state senate and even state legislature seats by county or town, and not by recent census counts of population. Some 36 states had reapportionment cases in the 1960s, and there was talk of calling a new constitutional convention, since neither Congress not the courts were likely to change things in the states' favor.

The populists started the ball rolling for the 17th Amendment, because farmers on the plains were likely to have little input on who their Senator would be. The Amendment probably wouldn't have gone through if big city Progressives didn't pick it up, though, as the populist movement had died away in the TR years.

As for corruption cases, it may be that the cases of corruption in Senate elections were the tip of the iceberg. Given legislative corruption in other matters, the public probably assumed there was a lot going on that they didn't know about. If you found reasons not to trust your state representatives on other matters, you might not want them electing your Senators.

If you want to understand the spirit of the times, you might have a look at David Graham Phillips 1906 Cosmopolitan articles, "The Treason of the Senate." The progressives tended to get overheated about things and opted for easy, mechanical solutions to more complicated problems, but it's hard to see how, once the Democratic momentum had been started a century before, it could have been stopped.

Had the states remained more separate, had most people identified more with their state than with the country, indirect election of Senators by state legislators might have remained. But the nation had already prevailed over the states in people's minds so there wasn't much chance of the state legislatures retaining power over the voters of the various states. The removal of the state legislatures from Senate elections may have been more an effect than a cause.

In smaller countries mayors, governors and provincial officials serve in the legislature. This guarantees that local authorities will have more power in the national government. In a country as large as ours, this tradition never caught on. In the early years, mayors and governors would have been on the road more time than they were in Washington or in their own state ... which might have been a good idea.