Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 125 
ernments affect us, has become by judicial decisions, by 
amendment, and by the very evolution of our national 
life, a thing which must be reckoned with as our supreme 
law, and which deals with the most important questions 
of our every-day life. Let us now consider what is the 
outlook for its amendment. 
Article V. of the constitution is as follows: “The 
Congress, whenever both houses shall deem it necessary, 
shall propose amendments to this constitution, or, on the 
application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the sev- 
eral states, shall call a convention for proposing amend- 
ments, which, in either case, shall be valid, to all intents 
and purposes, as part of this constitution, when ratified 
by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, 
or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as one or the 
other mode of ratification may be proposed by the con- 
gress: provided that no amendment which may be made 
prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight 
shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in 
the ninth section of the first article— and that no state, 
without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suf- 
frage in the senate.” The first clause of the proviso has 
become obsolete by lapse of time and the abolition of 
slavery. The second retains the rule of unanimous con- 
sent as to all amendments looking to a change of repre- 
sentation in the senate. 
Let us now imagine that the sentiment in favor of 
amendment has grown to an issue. Congress has once 
passed an income-tax law in which probably nine-tenths 
of the people of the United States believed; but it was 
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a 
decision which renders it improbable that any income-tax 
law can ever escape the veto of that tribunal. The vast 
majority of the voters of the United States are at this 
time in favor, I think, of the election of United States 
Senators by popular vote, and some twenty states have 
passed resolutions applying for a constitutional conven- 
tion to propose such an amendment. There is a growing 
sentiment in favor of public ownership of the railways; a 
subject which cannot be dealt with in any adequate way 
by the several states and as to which the constitutional 
authority of the general government, without a constitu- 
tional amendment, is, to say the least, very doubtful. In 
