legislation on the ground that it is merely a proposal to exercise the authority of the Federal Government to engage in educational activities. Moreover, if the purpose of this service is on the one hand educational, as claimed by its proponents, and on the other hand medical, as the record clearly shows, why do the proponents of the bill undertake to intrust its administration to a bureau that is neither educational nor medical and not to the established educational bureau of the Federal Government, the Bureau of Education, or to the established health service of the Federal Government, the Public Health Service, either or both? At a time when economy and efficiency in government is being urgently demanded there is certainly no good reason why a lay bureau, the Children's Bureau, should be built up into a great medical organization in order to carry on the work proposed by this bill. This is said without disparaging in any way the activities of the Children's Bureau in the discharge of those duties that it was created to perform, which are certainly not medical in character. When it is remembered, however, that the work to be performed under this bill is medical in character and that the Public Health Service is organized with a large and efficient corps of medical officers, commissioned and noncommissioned, and other trained personnel, scattered throughout the United States, and when it is remembered that the Public Health Service is in intimate contact with the State boards of health throughout the country, in connection with its annual conference of State health officers and in connection with its activities in the fields of interstate and foreign quarantine and of rural sanitation, there seems to be no good reason for building up another organization to work in so closely a related field as maternal and infant hygiene. To do so means duplication of effort, increased cost of overhead expenses, and diminished efficiency and economy. That Federal aid such as is now proposed should at most be only temporary in character, and that the time has now come to discontinue such aid, was emphasized by President Coolidge in his annual Budget message, quoted in the Congressional Record, January 7, 1927, page 1219, when he said: I have referred in previous Budget messages to the advisability of restricting and curtailing Federal subsidies to the States. The maternity act offers concrete opportunity to begin this program. The States should be in a position to walk alone along the highway of helpful endeavor, and I believe it in the interest of the States and the Federal Government to give them the opportunity. And that such aid should essentially be of a temporary character has since been pointed out by President Hoover when he said in his annual message to Congress in 1929: The Federal Government provides for an extensive and valuable program of constructive service, in education, home building, protection to women and children, employment, public health, recreation, and many other directions. In a broad sense Federal activity in these directions has been confined to research and dissemination of information and experience, and at most to temporary subsidies to the States in order to secure uniform advancement in practice and methods. Any other attitude by the Federal Government will undermine one of the most precious possessions of the American people; that is local and individual responsibility. We should adhere to this policy. Great effort has been expended by the proponents of this legislation to show the volume of activities carried on under the SheppardTowner Maternity and Infancy Act, but comparatively little effort to show the results. It is the results, however, that the taxpayers of the country have the right to look for. Activities over a period of more than seven years without tangible results must be looked on as of at least uncertain value, and probably worthless. When the proponents of this bill were put to the test in public hearings, they failed to produce any evidence to show any excess in death rates in rural areas as compared with death rates in urban areas. A similar failure occurred with respect to the production of evidence relating to the death rates of mothers and infants. The proponents of Federal subsidies to reduce such death rates offered no evidence to show that the seven years' work under the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act and the $11,000,000 of Federal and State money expended in carrying it into effect accelerated the rate of decline in infant mortality that prevailed before the act was passed or caused a decline in maternal mortality where none had previously existed. Consequently, nothing has been shown to justify the revivification of the act, but, on the contrary, it is clear that the time is not ripe, if it ever will be, for making such legislation permanently a part of our established order of government. In fact, official statistics confirm the common-sense conclusion, as pointed out to the committee by Miss Mary G. Kilbreth, chairman of the board of directors of the Woman Patriotic Corporation, that The health of American mothers and infants-of whom there are 2,500,000 of each every year-can not possibly depend upon whether or not six doctors attached to the Children's Bureau, and under the supervision of social workers without medical training, have a Federal license, in the shape of a maternity act, to "practice" by mail and by long distance upon 5,000,000 mothers and children. The health of mothers and infants depends upon the skill and training of doctors and nurses on the spot. Of all the ridiculous proposals for centralized national authority ever made, none can possibly equal in absurdity the allegation that the practice of obstetrics and pediatrics can be improved by giving a lay bureau in the Labor Department $1,000,000 a year to bribe the States to allow that bureau's 6 doctors, surrounded by 60 social workers, to tell the 150,000 independent physicians of the country "what to do when the baby comes. Proponents of the proposed legislation profess to believe that it does not establish Federal supervision and control over intrastate health and welfare of mothers and infants that under the Constitution belong exclusively to the several States. So long as a State can not receive a Federal subsidy unless it makes appropriations from State funds in an amount indicated by the Federal Government and to be expended only in the execution of plans approved by the Federal Government, in a manner satisfactory to the Federal Government; so long as no State can carry on work in the field of maternal and infant hygiene under the provision of the proposed bill unless or until the Federal Government has approved the plans for such work; so long as the Federal Government may withhold Federal money at any moment that it is not satisfied with the way in which work is carried on; so long as each State is compelled to make such reports concerning its activities and expenditures as a Federal bureau may dictate, it is idle to pretend that the Federal Government is not in supreme control. The fact that a State may suggest or submit to the Federal Government the plans they would like to see carried into effect is hardly more than a sugar coating to the bitter dose involved in the sacrifice of State independence and subjection to Federal control implied in this bill. The enactment of this bill clearly would be an encroachment by the Federal Government on the traditional and constitutional rights of the States, and one that bodes no good to our dual plan of Government. In the words of Chief Justice Hughes: Paradoxical as it may seem, not only the security but the efficiency of the Union lies in the appropriate maintenance of the authority of the States within the proper spheres of local government and local policy. Despite all the economic changes and the intimacies of closely related activities, notwithstanding the vast expansion of interstate commerce in novel forms leading to unanticipated applications of the national authority, which was granted with extraordinary widsom in a very general formula, the States continue as reservoirs of power reserved, not conferred, by which they deal with a multitude of particular concerns and enjoy differentiations congenial to local sentiment. However difficult it may be in constitutional interpretation to maintain perfectly and to the satisfaction of all this balance between State and Nation, it is of the essence of American institutions that it should be preserved so far as human wisdom makes this possible, and that encroachments upon State authority, however contrived, should be resisted with the same intelligent determination as that which demands that the national authority should be fully exercised to meet national needs. Against such encroachments upon the prerogatives of the States there are ample warnings by our Presidents. In his first message to Congress, President Lincoln said: To maintain inviolate the rights of the States to order and control under the Constitution their own affairs by their own judgment exclusively is essential for the preservation of that balance of power on which our institutions rest. And President William Howard Taft: The good sought in unconstitutional legislation is an insidious feature, because it leads citizens and legislators of good purpose to provide it, without thought of the serious breach it will make in the ark of our covenant, or the harm which will come from breaking down recognized standards. In the maintenance of local self-government, on the one hand, and the national power on the other, our country has been able to endure and prosper for near a century and a half. In a dissenting report on similar proposed legislation in the Seventy-first Congress, Representative Schuyler Merritt, after arguing at length on the probable unconstitutionality of the bill, declared that it was an extreme example of the bad tendency to shift responsibility from States and communities where it belongs to the United States, where it does not belong, and added: It is fundamentally objectionable because it tends to destroy local self-government in purely local matters. If local communities or States look to a distant government for help in their own peculiar concerns, and if they look for instructions to a distant bureau laying down rules for a whole continent and for hundreds of millions of people, it is clear that these communities can not have either the sense of responsibility or the direct and vital interest in their own affairs, which is not only essential for the communities themselves but for the independence and selfreliance and initiative of the citizens who make up these communities. And if the independence and self-reliance of the citizenship of the States is weakened, then the very foundation of a democratic nation is in danger. There is no denying that legislation of this character appeals strongly to the emotions of every normal man and woman. To make such a magnificent gesture as is embodied in this legislation toward the relief of suffering mothers and children gives to every one a feeling of self-satisfaction, even though the gesture is based on the use of other people's money. It is doubtless this element that serves to arouse so strongly the popular demand for this legislation, especially among womankind. Before carrying into effect, however, the impulse to afford the relief that this legislation is supposed to promise, it is necessary to consider the well-being not only of those who are to be relieved but of those from whom the money must be taken through taxation wherewith to afford relief. Certainly this is no time for any such gesture on the part of Congress for relief, as must necessarily be the case, only through the imposition of increased taxes on Federal and State taxpayers. Moreover, while an individual may be at liberty to spend his own money for the gratification of his own impulses regardless of whether they do or do not rest on a solid foundation of fact and the probable production of the results aimed at, a trustee is not at liberty to expend moneys held by him in trust otherwise than on the basis of facts and probable results and in strict accordance with the terms of the trust, not on the basis of emotional impulse. In the present situation, it must be remembered that the Government holds the money over which it has control only as trustee for the benefit of the entire people, to be expended only on the basis of fact and in accordance with the terms of the trust deed-the Constitution. It behooves the Congress, therefore, to look warily on appeals for the enactment of this legislation based on emotion only and to measure its action by the solid record of facts and of achievements, or lack of achievements, with respect to similar legislation in the past. GEORGE H. MOSES. HUBERT D. STEPHENS. HARRY B. HAWES. JOSIAH W. BAILEY. I am of the opinion that the appropriation and activity proposed are not authorized by the Constitution. It appears that the constitutionality of the bill may not be tested in the courts. If this is so, the fact is additional reason why the Congress should not attempt to exercise the power. We will exercise a doubtful power only in event of necessity. One of the principal difficulties of our country is the centralization of the Government. So far from encouraging further centralization, I consider it my duty to move at every opportunity in the direction of decentralization. States that insist upon their rights must recognize their duties. To those who say the States have exhausted their funds, it may be answered that the Federal Government has also exhausted its funds, and to a greater degree than any State. With this additional statement I subscribe to the minority report. J. W. BAILEY. I disagree to the renewal of any lapsed State subsidies in this year wher the Congress can balance its Budget only by putting drastic new taxes upon the American people. The first charge upon the Congress is to balance the Budget and save the public credit. To achieve this fundamental objective calls for many disagreeable decisions. But the need is too paramount to be ignored, and it must be met with least possible increase in taxation. О A. H. VANDENBERG. |