History
Initiative and referendum advocates were defeated at New
Hampshire’s 1902 constitutional convention by an overwhelming 250 to 40
vote of the delegates. George H. Duncan of East Joffrey, secretary of the
New Hampshire Direct Legislation League in 1912, led an effort to pass I&R
at the next state constitutional convention, but lost again by a vote of 166
to 156. Duncan attributed the defeat to the fact that “officials of the
Concord and Montreal Railroad, a subsidiary of the Boston and Maine
[Railroad], were using railroad money to defeat us.”