The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) | Page 8

National Government breaking down in its effective machinery through the burdens that threaten to be cast upon it; and the danger that the local self-government of the States may, through disuse, become inefficient. The House of Governors plan seems to have in it possibilities of mastering both of these evils at one stroke.
There are three basic weaknesses in the American system of government as we know it to-day. There are three insidious evils that are creeping like a blood-poison through the body politic, threatening the very life of the Republic. They are killing the soul of self-government, though perhaps not its form; destroying its essence, though perhaps not its name.
These three evils, so intertwined as to be practically one, are: the growing centralization at Washington, the shifting, undignified, uncertain status of State rights, and the lack of uniform laws.
It was to propose a possible cure for these three evils that the writer sent in February, 1907, to President Roosevelt and to the Governors of the country a pamphlet on a new idea in American politics. It was the institution of a new House, a new representation of the people and of the States to secure uniform legislation on those questions wherein the Federal Governments could not act because of Constitutional limitation. The plan proposed, so simple that it would require no Constitutional amendment to put it into effect, was the organization of the House of Governors.
More than thirty Governors responded in cordial approval of the plan. Eight months later, October, 1907, President Roosevelt invited the State Executives to a conference at Washington in May, 1908. The writer pointed out at that time what seemed an intrinsic weakness of the convention, that it could have little practical result, because it would be, after all, only a conference, where the Federal Government, by its limitations, was powerless to carry the findings of the conference into effect, and the Governors, acting not as a co-operative body, but as individuals, would be equally powerless in effecting uniform legislation. It was a conference of conflicting powers.
The Governors were then urged to meet upon their own initiative, as a body of peers, working out by united State action those problems where United States action had for more than a century proved powerless. At the close of the Roosevelt conference the Governors, at an adjourned meeting, appointed a committee to arrange time and place for a session of the Governors in a body of their own, independently of the President. This movement differentiated the proposed meeting absolutely from that with the President in every fundamental. It essentially became more than a conference; it meant a deliberative body of the Governors uniting to initiate, to inspire, and to influence uniform laws. The committee then named, consisting of three members, later increased to five, set the dates January 18, 19, and 20, 1910, for the first session of the Governors as a separate body.
WILLIAM G. JORDAN[1]
[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