[Footnote 1: Reproduced from _The Craftsman_ of October, 1910, by
permission of Gustav Stickley.]
When a new idea or a new institution confronts the world it must answer
all challenges, show its credentials, specify its claims for
usefulness, and prove its promise by its performance. As an idea the
House of Governors has won the cordial approval of the American press
and public; as an institution it must now justify this confidence. To
grasp fully its powers and possibilities requires a clear, definite
understanding of its spirit, scope, plan, and purpose, and its attitude
toward the Federal Government.
The House of Governors is a union of the Governors of all the States,
meeting annually in conference as a deliberative body (with no
lawmaking power) for initiative, influence, and inspiration toward a
better, higher, and more unified Statehood. Its organization will be
simple and practical, avoiding red-tape, unnecessary formality, and
elaborate rules and regulations. It will adopt the few fundamental
expressions of its principles of action and the least number of rules
that are absolutely essential to enunciate its plan and scope, to
transmute its united wisdom into united action and to guarantee the
coherence, continuity, and permanence of the organization despite the
frequent changes in its membership due to the short terms of the
Executives in many of the States.
With the House of Governors rests the power of securing through the
cooperative action of the State legislatures uniform laws on vital
questions demanded by the whole country almost since the dawn of our
history, but heretofore impossible of enactment. The Federal Government
is powerless to pass these laws. For many decades, tight held by the
cramping bonds of Constitutional limitation, it has strained and
struggled, like Samson in the temple, to find some weak spot at which
it could free itself, and endangered the very supporting columns of the
edifice of the Republic. It was bound in its lawmaking powers to the
limitation of eighteen specific phrases, beyond which all power
remained with the States and the people. In the matter of enacting
uniform laws the States have been equally powerless, for, though their
Constitutional right to make them was absolute and unquestioned, no way
had been provided by which they could exercise that right. The States
as individuals, passing their own laws, without considering their
relation or harmony with the laws of other States, brought about a
condition of confusion and conflict. Laws that from their very nature
should be common to all of the States, in the best interests of all,
are now divergent, different, and antagonistic. We have to-day the
strange anomaly of forty-six States united in a union as integral parts
of a single nation, yet having many laws of fundamental importance as
different as though the States were forty-six distinct countries or
nationalities.
Facing the duality of incapacity--that of the Government because it was
not permitted to act and the States because they did not know how to
exercise the power they possessed--the Federal Government sought new
power for new needs through Constitutional amendments. This effort
proved fruitless and despairing, for with more than two thousand
attempts made in over a century only three amendments were secured, and
these were merely to wind up the Civil War. The whole fifteen
amendments taken together have not added the weight of a hair of
permanent new power to the Federal Government. The people and the
States often sleep serenely on their rights, but they never willingly
surrender them, yet the surrender of a right is often the brave
recognition of a higher duty, the fine assumption of a higher
privilege. In many phases the need grew urgent, something had to be
done. By ingeniously tapping the Constitution to find a weak place and
hammering it thin by decisions, by interpretations, by liberal
readings, by technical evasions and other methods, needed laws were
passed in the interests of the people and the States. Many of these
laws would not stand the rigid scrutiny of the Supreme Court; to many
of them the Government's title may now be valid by a kind of
"squatter's sovereignty" in legislation,--merely so many years of
undisputed possession.
This was not the work of one administration; it ran with intermittent
ebb and flow through many administrations. Then the slumbering States,
turning restlessly in their complacency, at last awoke and raised a
mighty cry of "Centralization." They claimed that the Government was
taking away their rights, which may be correct in essence but hardly
just in form; they had lost their rights, primarily, not through
usurpation but through abrogation; the Government had acted because of
the default of the States, it had practically been forced to exercise
powers limited to the States because the States lapsed through neglect
and inaction. Then the Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our
great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six
innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to
"regulate commerce between the several States." It was a rubber phrase,
capable of infinite stretching. It was drawn out so as to cover
antitrust legislation, control and taxation of corporations,
water-power, railroad rates, etc., pure-food law, white-slave traffic,
and a host of others. But even with the most generous extension of this
phrase, which, though it may be necessary, was surely not the original
intent of the Constitution, the greatest number of the big problems
affecting the welfare of the people are still outside the province of
the Government and are up to the States for solution.
It was to meet this situation, wherein the Government and the States as
individuals could not act, that the simple, self-evident plan of the
House of Governors was proposed. It required no Constitutional
amendment or a single new law passed in any State to create it or to
continue it. It can not make laws; it would be unwise for it to make
them even were it possible. Its sole power is as a mighty moral
influence, as a focusing point for public opinion and as a body equal
to its opportunity of transforming public opinion into public sentiment
and inspiring legislatures to crystallize this sentiment into needed
laws. It will live only as it represents the people, as it has their
sympathy, support, and cooperation, as it seeks to make the will of the
people prevail. But this means a longer, stronger, finer life than any
mere legal authority could give it.
The House of Governors has the dignity of simplicity. It means merely
the conference of the State Executives, the highest officers and truest
representatives of the States, on problems that are State and
Interstate, and concerted action in recommendations to their
legislatures. The fullest freedom would prevail at all meetings; no
majority vote would control the minority; there would have to be a
quorum decided upon as the number requisite for an initial impulse
toward uniform legislation. If the number approving fell below the
quorum the subject would be shown as not yet ripe for action and be
shelved. Members would be absolutely free to accept or reject, to do
exactly as they please, so no unwilling legislation could be forced on
any State. But if a sufficient number agreed these Governors would
recommend the passage of the desired law to their legislatures in their
next messages. The united effort would give it a greater importance, a
larger dynamic force, and a stronger moral influence with each. It
would be backed by the influence of the Governors, the power of public
sentiment, the leverage of the press, so that the passage of the law
should come easily and naturally. With a few States passing it, others
would fall in line; it would be kept a live issue and followed up and
in a few years we would have legislation national in scope, but not in
genesis.
The House of Governors, in its attitude toward the Federal Government,
is one of right and dignified non-interference. It will not use its
influence with the Government, memorialize Congress, or pass
resolutions on national matters. What the Governors do or say
individually is, of course, their right and privilege, but as a body it
took its stand squarely and positively at its first conference which
met in Washington in January of this year as one of "securing greater
uniformity of State action and better State Government." Governor
Hughes expressed it in these words: "We are here in our own right as
State Executives; we are not here to accelerate or to develop opinion
with regard to matters which have been committed to Federal power." The
States in their relation to the Federal Government have all needed
representation in their Senators and Congressmen.
The attitude of the Governors in their conferences is one of
concentration on State and Interstate problems which are outside of the
domain and Constitutional rights of the Federal Government to solve.
There can be no interference when each confines itself to its own
duties. In keeping the time of the nation the Federal Government
represents the hour-hand, the States, united, the minute-hand. There
will be correct time only as each hand confines itself strictly to its
own business, neither attempting to jog the other, but working in
accord with the natural harmony wrapped up in the mechanism.
We need to-day to draw the sharpest clear-cut line of demarcation
between Federal and State powers. This is in no spirit of antagonism,
but in the truest harmony for the best interests of both. It means an
illumination which will show that the "twilight zone," so called, does
not exist. This dark continent of legislation belongs absolutely to the
States and to the people in the unmistakable terms of the Tenth
Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution or prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the
States, respectively, and to the people." This buffer territory of
legislation, the domain of needed uniform laws, belongs to the States
and through the House of Governors they may enter in and possess their
own. The Federal Government and the States are parts of one great
organization, each having its specific duties, powers, and
responsibilities, and between them should be no conflict, no inharmony.
Let the Federal Government, through Congress, make laws up to the very
maximum of its rights and duties under the Constitution; let the
States, taking up their neglected duties and privileges, relieve the
Government of those cares and responsibilities forced upon it by the
inactivity of the States and which it should never have had to assume.
With the burden thus equitably readjusted, with the dignity of the two
powers of Government working out their individual problems in the
harmony of a fuller understanding, let us face the results. If it then
seem, in the light of changed conditions from those of the time of the
writing of the Constitution, that certain control now held by the
States can not properly be exercised by them, that in final decision of
the best wisdom of the people this power should be vested in the
Federal Government, let the States not churlishly hold on to the casket
of a dead right, but surrender the living body of a responsibility and
a duty to the power best able to be its guardian. There are few, if
any, of their neglected powers of legislation that the States and the
people acting in cooperation, through the House of Governors, will not
be able to handle.
Some of the subjects upon which free discussion tending toward uniform
laws seems desirable are: marriage and divorce, rights of married
women, corporations and trusts, insurance, child labor, capital
punishment, direct primaries, convict labor and labor in general,
prison reforms, automobile regulations, contracts, banking,
conveyancing, inheritance tax, income tax, mortgages, initiative,
referendum and recall, election reforms, tax adjustment, and similar
topics. In great questions, like Conservation, the Federal Government
has distinct problems it must carry out alone; there are some problems
that must be solved by the States alone, some that may require to be
worked out in cooperation. But the greatest part of the needed
conservation is that which belongs to the States, and which they can
manage better, more thoroughly, more judiciously, with stronger appeal
to State pride, upbuilding, and prosperity, with less conflict and
clearer recognition of local needs and conditions and harmony with them
than can the Federal Government. Four-fifths of the timber standing in
the country to-day is owned, not by the States or the Government, but
by private interests.
The House of Governors will not seek uniformity merely for the sake of
uniformity. There are many questions whereon uniform laws would be
unnecessary, and others where it would be not only unwise, but
inconceivably foolish. Many States have purely individual problems that
do not concern the other States and do not come in conflict with them,
but even in these the Governors may gain an occasional incidental
sidelight of illumination from the informal discussion in a conference
that may make thinking clearer and action wiser. The spirit that should
inspire the States is the fullest freedom in purely State problems and
the largest unity in laws that affect important questions in Interstate
relations.
While uniform law is an important element in the thought of the
Conference it is far from being the only one. The frank, easy
interchange of view, opinion, and experience brings the Governors
closely together in the fine fellowship of a common purpose and a
common ideal. They are broadened, stimulated, and inspired to a keener,
clearer vision on a wider outlook. The most significant, vital, and
inspiring phases of these conferences, those which really count for
most, and are the strongest guaranties of the permanence and power of
this movement, must, however, remain intangible. This fact was manifest
in every moment of that first Conference last January.
The fading of sectional prejudice in the glow of sympathetic
understanding was clearly evident. Some of the Western Governors in
their speeches said that their people of the West had felt that they
were isolated, misrepresented, misunderstood, and misjudged; but now
these Governors could go back to their States and their people with
messages of good will and tell them of the identity of interest, the
communion of purpose, the kinship of common citizenship, and the closer
knowledge that bound them more firmly to the East, to the South, and to
the North. Other Governors spoke of the facilitating of official
business between the States because of these meetings. They would no
longer, in correspondence, write to a State Executive as a mere name
without personality, but their letters would carry with them the
memories of close contact and cordial association with those whom they
had learned to know. There was no faintest tinge of State jealousies or
rivalry. The Governors talked frankly, freely, earnestly of their
States and for them, but it was ever with the honest pride of
trusteeship, never the petty vanity of proprietorship.
Patriotism seemed to throw down the walls of political party and
partizanship and in the three days' session the words Republican or
Democrat were never once spoken. The Governors showed themselves an
able body of men keenly alive to the importance of their work and with
a firm grasp on the essential issues. The meeting added a new dignity
to Statehood and furnished a new revelation of the power, prestige, and
possibilities of the Governor's office. The atmosphere of the session
was that of States' rights, but it was a new States' rights, a
purified, finer, higher recognition by the States of their individual
right and duty of self-government within their Constitutional
limitations. It meant no lessening of interest in the Federal
Government or of respect and honor of it. It was as a family of sons
growing closer together, strengthened as individuals and working to
solve those problems they have in common, and to make their own way
rather than to depend in weakness on the father of the household to
manage all their affairs and do their thinking for them. To him should
be left the watchfulness of the family as a whole, not the dictation of
their individual living.
President Taft had no part in the Conference, but in an address of
welcome to the Governors at the White House showed his realization of
the vital possibility of the meeting in these words:
"I regard this movement as of the utmost importance. The Federal
Constitution has stood the test of more than one hundred years in
supplying the powers that have been needed to make the central
Government as strong as it ought to be, and with this movement toward
uniform legislation and agreement between the States I do not see why
the Constitution may not serve our purpose always."