History
When the founding convention of the National Direct Legislation
League met in St. Louis in 1896, it elected 56 vice presidents, four of whom
were from Ohio. None of the other 36 states which were represented
provided so many.
The leader who guided Ohio initiative and referendum forces to
victory was the Reverend Herbert S. Bigelow of Cincinnati’s Vine Street
Congregational Church. Church members who disapproved of his
political work quit in droves; his salary diminished to the point that he and
his wife had to take in boarders to make ends meet. When he invited the
I&R advocate and Prohibitionist R. S. Thompson to speak to the
congregation, the church’s trustees locked the doors. Later, the trustees
filed formal charges of heresy against Bigelow before a church court, but
he was never tried. Eventually, Bigelow’s supporters won control of the
board of trustees and helped him make Vine Street a nerve center of the
state’s Progressive movement.
When the Ohio state senate approved an I&R amendment in 1906,
Bigelow sensed that success was near and took a leave of absence from
the church, with his congregation’s consent, to work full time for I&R, “for a
time, perhaps two or three years.” In 1908, despite opposition from
Governor Grosvenor, “the well-known machine representative,” (as Equity
called him), the I&R bill passed both houses, but was killed by legislators
voting secretly in a conference committee. I&R backers charged that “the
Republican bosses and their tools in the state senate” were responsible.
The Progressives finally got their I&R amendment, not through the
legislature, but in a state constitutional convention, along with some 41
other amendments, which were submitted for voter approval in a special
election held 3 September 1912. A contemporary account of the
campaign called it “the most bitter and momentous struggle known in the
state for a generation. Every ruse and trick known to Big Business
politicians was employed to frighten the people of Ohio from adopting
the I&R. The whole corporate power of the state backed by Wall Street
money and influence was thrown into the fight. The Catholic Church
stood against the people’s power measures and issued printed instructions
to their members, at the Sunday services, on how to vote.”
The fight for the I&R amendment and for other vitally important
amendments was led by Reverend Bigelow, ably assisted by Mayor Brand
Whitlock of Toledo and Mayor Baker of Cleveland. The I&R amendment
passed with 57.5 percent of the vote.
The first initiatives to win voter approval were a Prohibition measure
and a law, which later was ruled unconstitutional, to allow voters to veto
the legislature’s ratification of a federal constitutional amendment (1918).
Voters in 1933 approved aid to the aged and, in 1936, overwhelmingly
passed an initiative banning taxes on food. In 1949 they dealt a serious
blow to political machines in the state, abolishing the voting-booth system
of electing an entire party slate of candidates with the flick of a single
lever. Henceforth, voters decided the merits of each candidate
independently.
During the next 39 years, voters rejected all but one initiative put
before them. The exception was a 1977 vote to repeal a law, approved
only months previously by the legislature, that allowed people to register
to vote at the polls on election day rather than requiring them to register
beforehand.
In 1992, a term limits initiative was approved by the voters
overwhelmingly and in 1994 an initiative prohibiting “the current wholesale
tax on soft drinks” was approved. It was the last statewide initiative to be
adopted by the citizens.
Excerpted from the Initiative & Referendum Almanac by M. Dane Waters.