The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-13

| country with the people in every other I section continues. and Will. contlnue with increasing force and emect: We are urging forward in a development | of business and social life which tehoS ! more and more to obliteration or state lines and the decrease of State power as compared with national power; the relations of the business over which the Federal Government Is assuming control of interstate transportation with State transportation. of interstate commerce with state commerce, are so l intimate and the separation of the two | is so impracticable that the tendency 1 is plainly towards the practical con- trol of the national Government over both. New projects of national control are mooted: entrol of insurance; uni form divorce laws; child labor laws; and many others affecting matters for | merly entirely within the cognisance l of the State are proposed.
 I submit to your judgment and de- sire to press upon you with all the
 earnestness I possess that there Is but
 one way in which the States of the Union can maintain their power and authority under the conditions which are now before you, and that way Is by an awakening on the part of the States to a realization of their duties
 to the country at large.
 No state Can Live Alone.
 Under conditions which now exist, no State can live unto itself alone and regulate it's affairs with sole reference to its own treasury It's own convent ence, it's own special interests Every State is bound to frame it's legislation and its administration with reference to the effect upon all it's sister States. If any State is maintaining laws which afford opportunity and authority for practices condemned by the public
 sense of the whole country, or laws which through the operatio nof our
 modern system of communications and business are injurious to the interests of the whole country, that State Is vi- plating the conditions upon which alone can its power be preserved.
 If any State maintains laws which promote and foster the enormous over capitalization of corporations con demned by the people of the country generally; If any State maintains laws designed to make easy the formation of trusts and the creation of mOnopo- lies; if any State maintains laws which permit conditions of child labor favor ing the sense of mankind; ifl any State
 maintains laws of marriage and di- vorce so far inconsistent with the gem eral standard of the nation as to Hio- lently derange the domestic relations which the majority of the States desire to preserve, that State is promoting
 the tendency of the people of the coun- try to seek relief through the national Government and to press forward the movement for national control and the extinction of local control
 The intervention of the national Gov. ernment in many of the matters which 1t has recently undertaken would have been wholly unnecessary if the States themselves had been alive to their duty towards the general body of the coun- A~Ry L. ES- A..~ .s.s..
 of States rights to inveigh against the i supremacy of .he constitutional laws of
 the United States or against the Cx- tension of national authority In the fields of national control where the States themselves fail in the perform "nce of their duties.
 The desire for self government among
 the people of the United States is too | strong to long permit them to respect any ones right to exercise a power which he fails to exercise. The gov. ernmental control which they deem just
 and necessary they will have.
 It may be that such control could be better exercised in particular fn- stances by the governments of the States but the people will have the l control they need either from the States or from the national Government; and If theG fail to furnish it in due measure. sooner or later constructions
 of the Constitution will be found to vest the power where it will be exer-
 cised, in the national Government The
 true ana only way to preserve State authority is to be found in the awak- ened consciences of the States, their
 broadened views and higher standard
 of responsibility to the general public
 in effective legislatlon by the States in conformity to the general moral sense
 of the country and in the vigorous ex- ercise of the public good if the State authority is to be preserved.