communists, anarchists and repudiators of debt." Congressman Swanson also endorsed free rural mail delivery, aid to rural banks, graduated federal income taxes (that became the 16th Amendment), reduced federal excise taxes and direct election of U.S. Senators (that became the 17th Amendment). He rose to influence on the House Ways and Means Committee and as proto-party whip. When the Spanish–American War in 1898 stimulated demand for farm products, the family farms again prospered and his brothers opened a wholesale grocery in Danville. In 1903 Swanson bought Eldon, a plantation in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, built by the Whittle family for whom Chatham's Whittle Street is named. He lived there (when not in Washington, D.C.) most of the rest of his life. Swanson also entered into various real estate consortiums with Flood and his nephew, Harry F. Byrd. Governor Swanson's attempt to become Governor of Virginia in 1901 failed. However, after the Virginia Constitution of 1902 disenfranchised many African American and poor white voters, he won the Democratic primary in 1905. In the general election he defeated Republican Lunsford L. Lewis of Rockingham County by a nearly 2 to 1 margin. Claude Swanson became the 45th Governor of Virginia, serving from 1906 until 1910. He was known as a progressive: reducing railroad rates and reorganizing the new State Corporation Commission, adding more capable school superintendents from his position on the State Board of Education (and funding their salaries), and building roads, schools and a tuberculosis sanatorium, reorganizing the state Board of Health, and establishing a Board of Charities and Corrections with later became the Department of Public Welfare. However, this was also an era of increased racial polarization in Virginia, and under Swanson and his lieutenant governor James Taylor Ellyson, African American schools received far fewer funds, and the state's eugenics program would flower in the 1920s. U.S. Senator Senator John W. Daniel died in office in June 1910. In August 1910, his successor as governor William Hodges Mann appointed Swanson to fill the vacancy until the end of Daniel's term on March 3, 1911. In February 1911, Gov. Mann appointed Swanson to the term Daniel for which Daniel had been reelected before his death, which began on March 4, 1911. Swanson won a non-binding primary for the seat in September 1911, and in January 1912, the Virginia General Assembly ratified the primary results by electing Swanson to the remainder of the