lishment clause, would be a latent explosive planted in the document.
When the convention of 1967 recommended a constitution without that
provision, the bomb would explode.
The 1894 convention manifested, to a degree greater than at any
previous time in New York's history, the tension between urban and
rural New York. This tension is most clearly evident in the arguments
over apportionment, but it is also obvious in the suffrage amendments,
the dual registration system for urban and rural areas, the separation
of city from state and national elections, and the delegates' unwillingness to grant any significant home rule power to the cities. The vision
of a rural republic, Protestant and Republican, and that of an urban
democracy, ethnic and Democratic, provided the ideological and cultural context for many of the delegates at the convention.
The convention succeeded in providing some protection for traditional New Yorkers against a new order emerging from a combination
of immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. The concern of
many Republicans to preserve a New York they believed was slipping
away, combined with the inability of independent and city Republicans
to unite on a coherent response to this emerging order, accounts for
the lack of theoretical coherence at the convention.
Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior
in the Northeast, 1893-1896 ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1972),
pp. 63-64, and Lincoln, Constitutional History of New York, III, pp. 3-25,
provide a full discussion of this dispute.
Annual Message, January 4, 1887. Messages From the Governors, VIII, pp. 309-310.
Laws of New York, Chap. 8 ( 1883).
Arthur R. Bentley, The Process of Government ( Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980); David Truman, The Governmental Process ( New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1951).
Richard McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in
New York State, 1893-1910 ( Ithaca: Cornell University press, 1981), pp. 52-53.
Sketches of the delegates can be found in the Convention Manual of
Procedure, Forms and Rules For the Regulation of Business in the Sixth New
York State Constitutional Convention, 1894 Pt. I, vol. 2: Delegates Manual
and Introduction ( Albany: The Argus Co., 1984).
McSeveney, Politics of Depression, pp. 33-35.
Robert Crosby Eager, "Governing New York State: Republicans and
Reform, 1894-1900" (Ph.D. Diss., Stanford University, 1977), p. 52.
See, e.g., the remarks of delegate Frederick Holls, as quoted in Eager, "Governing New York State," pp. 8-9.
Richard McCormick, "Shaping Republican Strategy: Political Change in New York State, 1893-1910"