The Australian ballot enabled the honest citizen to vote in secrecy and safety, but it failed to touch the fact that the nominations were still outside the law. "To find the honest men," Bryce wrote, "and having found them, to put them in office and keep them there, is the great problem of American politics." So long as a boss could direct the nomination he could tolerate an honest election. The movement to legalize the party primaries was just beginning when the ballot reform was accomplished. The most extreme of the primary reformers saw the need for a preliminary election conducted within each party, but under all the safeguards of law, to the end that the voters might themselves determine their candidates. Direct primaries were discussed by the younger men, who were often ambitious, but helpless because of the rigor with which the bosses selected their own candidates. In 1897 a young ex-Congressman, Robert M. LaFollette, worked out a complete system of local and national primaries, and found wide and sympathetic hearing for it. The movement had to face the bitter opposition of the machine politicians because it struck directly at their power, but it progressed slowly. In 1901 it won in Minnesota; a little later it won in Wisconsin; and in the next ten years it became a central feature in reform platforms. The reforms of the primary and the ballot were designed to improve the quality of public officers, and were supplemented by a demand for direct legislation which would check up the result. In Switzerland a scheme had been devised by which the people, by petition, could initiate new laws or obtain a vote upon existing laws. The idea of submitting special measures to popular vote, or referendum, was old in the United States, for in this way state constitutions and constitutional amendments were habitually adopted, and matters of city charters, loans and franchises often determined. The initiative, however, was new, and appealed to the reformer who resented the refusal of the legislature to pass desired laws as well as the unwillingness to pass worthy ones. The Populists, in 1892, recommended that the system of direct legislation be investigated, and they favored its adoption in 1896. A journal for the promotion of the reform appeared in 1894. In 1898 the first State, South Dakota, adopted the principle of initiative and referendum in a constitutional amendment. To those who attacked the device as only mechanical it was answered: "Direct legislation is not a panacea for all national ills. In fact it is not a panacea at all. It is merely a spoon with which the panacea can be administered. Specific legislation is the panacea for political ills."