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able, so far as at present discovered. The edges of the corporation may be trimmed by "social interest" laws, and constitutional protection weakened by amendments and free construction of "due process of law," but this does not get very far and the corporation survives the shocks. Labor may advance its standards, but it will gradually be forced to recognize the law of Malthus and the "law of the land." Relief will not come in any of these ways. It will come by the gradual realization by the working rich that public service is higher than excessive wealth, and that this public service may consist in raising the character of the other classes.

I believe with Hoover that "In the end, no group can dominate the nation and a few successes in imposing the will of any group are its sure death warrant. . . . With the enormous shift in growth to industry and commerce we have erected organisms that each generation has denounced as Frankensteins, yet the succeeding generation proves them to be controllable and useful." 1

CHAPTER XXXII

DISMANTLING THE STATES

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MODERN amendments to the Constitution take powers away from the States but do not take powers away from the federal government and give them to the States. President Judson of Chicago University points out that the last "seven amendments have added to the power of the federal government at the expense of the states - either depriving the states altogether of certain powers, or vesting in the federal government concurrently with the states powers theretofore belonging to the latter only. In a bewildering manner the federal government is absorbing all powers. There is the Prohibition Amendment. It swept the power away from the States and gave it to Washington. A horde of government employees by land and sea keep guard on the daily habits of the people. If the law is enforced, it is hated; if not enforced, it is discriminatory and productive of lawlessness. It is an eminent example of what will happen when the federal government absorbs all of the important police powers of the States. The latest proposed amendment - Child Labor would add hundreds of thousands of employees to the federal staff and put them over every industry in the country. It has been defeated, and while every fair-minded person favors child labor laws, every far-seeing person fears a federal despotism. Unless there is an end to this centralization of power at Washington, he who controls the government will control the people, and the government will be greater than the governed. That leads to governmental tyranny. All power, all governmental activities, are being concentrated at Washington. As Senator Wadsworth said on January 16, 1926, “If this power increases, we shall have

established at Washington a great imperial government, overtopping and submerging the power of the people themselves in their several states and communities, manned by an army of bureaucrats, remote, often irresponsible, gaining more and more strength from its own momentum and clothed finally with the power to regulate the life of every person in the Republic." 1 What this absorption of powers by the federal government means may be realized by considering that in his daily life the American is affected chiefly by state laws and not by federal laws. As Judge Cooley says, "In the division of powers between States and nation, the larger portion, including nearly all that touched the interests of the people in their ordinary business relations and in their family and social life, were reserved to the States. All that related to the family and the domestic relation, the administration and distribution of estates, the forms of contract and conveyance, the maintenance of peace and order in the States, the punishment of common-law offences, the making provision for education, for public highways, for the protection of personal liberty and liberty of worship, all these powers were withheld from the jurisdiction of the federal government, and retained by the States, and their retention was calculated to give to the body of the people a larger interest in a proper administration of state authority than in that of the nation." 2 Moreover, the police power was retained by the States and no police powers were granted to the federal government. So also the granting of charters to local corporations and to municipalities and the regulation of quasi public corporations in their intrastate business belongs to the States. Gradually but unceasingly, however, the States are being destroyed. The framers of the Constitution were keenly aware of this danger that the States would be gradually eliminated by a centralized federal government. They provided against it the best they could. A little later the safeguards were strengthened by an express declaration in the Constitution that powers not delegated to the federal gov

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ernment were reserved to the States or people. But of course the Constitution had to allow amendments and now that power of amendment is being used to absorb all governmental power. In the wake follow extravagance, waste, an army of office holders, espionage, interference with private affairs, and dissatisfaction. A popular hero will appear who will attack property, favor equality of wealth, sanction every "reform," build up a powerful political machine, be reëlected again and again, and finally consider himself above the law. President Coolidge in an address May 16, 1926, well said, "No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local selfgovernment. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. Of all forms of government those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people. Being irresponsible they become autocratic, and being autocratic they resist all development. Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government, and overwhelms democracy. It is the one element in our institutions that sets up the pretense of having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody. While we ought to glory in the Union and remember that it is the source from which the states derive their chief title to fame, we must also recognize that the national administration is not and cannot be adjusted to the needs of local government. It is too far away to be informed of local needs, too inaccessible to be responsive to local conditions. The states should not be induced by coercion or by favor to surrender the management of their own affairs. The Federal government ought to resist the tendency to be loaded up with duties which the states should perform. It does not follow that because something ought to be done the national government ought to do it. But, on the other hand, when the great body of public opinion of the nation requires action, the states ought to understand that unless they are responsive to

such sentiment the national authority will be compelled to intervene. The doctrine of state rights is not a privilege to continue in wrongdoing but a privilege to be free from interference in welldoing. This nation is bent on progress. It has determined on the policy of meting out justice between man and man. It has decided to extend the blessings of an enlightened humanity. Unless the states meet these requirements, the national government reluctantly will be crowded into the position of enlarging its own authority at their expense. I want to see the policy adopted by the states of discharging their public functions so faithfully that instead of an extension on the part of the Federal government there can be a contraction."

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