For two days in January 1898 some fifty or so notable citizens gathered at New York's Board of Trade and Transportation to discuss various mechanisms for improving the nominating processes of the major parties. Many of those attending would play important roles in overhauling the election systems of their states in the years to come. George L. Record had already drafted the nation's first direct primary bill four years before, only to see it voted down in the New Jersey legislature. He and others viewed the first (and apparently last) “National Conference on Practical Reform of Primary Elections” as a watershed event. “As all of you know,” Record reminded the assembly, there had been “very little interest in primary reform, and it has been practically impossible to get anybody to pay any attention to it.” Yet, a change in the political climate seemed palpable. Four years of investigation and agitation on a variety of municipal issues had convinced the Chicago Civic Federation that “if any permanent reform were to be secured, it must be through the purification and utilization of the party primaries.” “The primary is the pivot of reform,” another delegate affirmed, and so it seemed for some years to come. Despite the obscurity that soon awaited it, the primary reform conference's claim to historical significance is not without merit. The conclave demarcated that point in time when an overhauling of the convention system became a cause célèbre for scholars, journalists, and partisan-minded legislators.