Cronin Con Compiler (1 results)

The full journals of the 1910 Arizona constitutional convention, the first and only constitutional convention for the state. This copy was presented by the compiler, Arizona State Librarian Con. P. Cronin, to Arizona Governor George W.P. Hunt, who presided over the 1910 convention and who served seven terms as governor. Laid into this volume is a copy of Hunt's calling card, as well as correspondence between him and Cronin in 1925 in which the librarian explains the long and arduous process of compiling the volume. In his letter, dated December 2, 1925, Cronin presents this copy to the governor and explains that "until the present time no complete record of the proceedings of the Arizona Constitutional Convention has existed." He goes on to describe how he spent months collating the incomplete proceedings with the original minutes of the stenographer to produce the present volume. In his return letter to Cronin, dated December 4, Hunt thanks him for his "tremendous amount of painstaking effort." As Cronin reminds Hunt in his letter, the 1910 Arizona constitution as passed by the convention was controversial with regard to several issues. Cronin calls the convention proceedings "the most important unpublished civic document in the United States today, - containing as it does the genesis of such 'revolutionary' doctrines of state government as the abrogation of the judiciary (which so aroused the ire of President Taft as to cause him to threaten to veto the Constitution), and many matters of so-called labor legislation, - all for the first time considered in constitutional convention." The original Arizona constitution provided for the recalling of judges, which led President William Howard Taft (a future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) to veto the constitution. It was then amended by the Arizona convention to remove the offending provision, after which Taft approved Arizona's statehood bid, and it became the 48th state on February 14, 1912. Subsequently, the state legislature approved a constitutional amendment reinstating the ability to recall judges. Other issues dealt with in the convention include water rights, labor rights (an eight-hour work day and no work for children under fourteen), elections, state boundaries, mines, and a ban on polygamous marriage. The final leaf features a signed letter certifying "that the within and fore-going is the full, true and correct copy of the volume 'Journals of the Constitutional Convention of Arizona, 1910,' on file and of record in the said State Library, as corrected." While the later printing of this typescript is well represented in institutional collections (OCLC locates eighteen copies), this original is one of the few produced by mimeograph. This copy is made especially valuable by the association with former Arizona Governor George Hunt, who presided over the 1910 convention. OCLC 4422964 (ref). Folio. Contemporary half red morocco and pebbled cloth, spine gilt. Worn at spine ends. Perforation stamp on titlepage. Very clean internally. Very good. The accompanying correspondence with some dampstaining along one edge.