§ 1.1.3 THE ARIZONA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

JurisdictionArizona

§ 1.1.3 The Arizona Constitutional Convention. Arizona became a territory in February of 1863 and was admitted to statehood on February 14, 1912. Mines and railroads, the state's principal employers, dominated the state's economy.27 At the time of the Arizona Constitutional Convention, Arizona had a population of 204,354 citizens.28 Cochise was the state's most populated county, reflecting the prominence of the mining and railroad industries.29 It was also the center of the state's young labor movement.30 By the time the Constitutional Convention convened, state unions had become well organized, reflecting the growth of labor unions and the populist movement nationally.31

The Democratic Party was the core of the progressive movement in Arizona. Democrats won the state's 1908 elections. In 1910, forty-one Democrats and eleven Republicans convened in Phoenix to write a constitution for Arizona. In a coalescing that ran counter to the political scene elsewhere, Democrats, Progressives, and Labor bonded to confront the "cruel yoke of corporate control."32

A progressive Democrat, George W.P. Hunt, "the people's man . . . with his arm around Union Labor," was elected president of the Constitutional Convention.33 He stacked the convention's Labor Committee with union men34 and appointed liberal Democrats to chair all twenty-four constitutional committees.35 Labor had driving force in Michael G. Cunniff of Yavapai County,36 considered to be the most radical of the delegates.37 Many of his measures were considered so radical that they were rejected, but, as a result of his presence, compromises were "just a little further to the left than they would otherwise have been."38

The unions' power, combined with the help of the Progressives,39 was substantia?the "predominant factor" at the convention.40 The convention delegates, referred to by eastern politicians as "a crazy assemblage of cowboys and Indians," and as "political nondescripts" in a local newspaper,41 fostering "socialist junk"42 and a "red eyed platform,"43 passed a constitution that contained significant safeguards and rights for labor, including the abolition of the fellow servant doctrine,44 a prohibition against waiver of an employer's liability as a condition of employment,45 a provision for an employer's liability law,46 a provision outlawing blacklisting,47 the establishment of the 8-hour day in government employment,48 prohibitions against the abrogation of damages for personal injuries49 and against limitation of damages for personal injuries,50 provisions requiring the defenses of assumption of risk and contributory negligence to be questions of fact for the jury "in all cases whatsoever,"51 the establishment of a workers' compensation law,52 a prohibition against employment of children under the age of 14 during school hours and another prohibiting any child under the age of 16 from working in underground mines or hazardous occupations,53 a prohibition against the use of aliens on public projects,54 and the establishment of the office of mine inspector.55


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Notes:

[27] John D. Leshy, The Making of the Arizona Constitution, 20 Ariz. St. L.J. 1, 29 (1988).

[28] The Records of the Arizona Constitutional Convention of 1910 62 (John S. Goff, ed., 1991).

[29] Leshy, supra note 27, at 29.

[30] Id. at 32.

[31] Id. at 30.

[32]...

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