In his campaign for a unicameral legislature in Nebraska, Senator George W. Norris cited the necessity of conference committees as one of the chief evils in the bicameral system. To Senator Norris, the conference committee is often a “third house” of the legislature, where a small group of men, working in secret and enjoying great parliamentary advantages, so modify bills in dispute between the two chambers that the will of the majority is defeated.

The year 1935—being one of the alternate years during which state politicians exert their persuasive talents in the capitols and not on the hustings—witnessed 44 regular and 21 special sessions of state legislatures. And only the Virginians entirely eschewed both regular and special legislating for the twelve-month period. But despite the 7,400 zealous legislators busily law-bent, and the thousands of new statutes now ornamenting the statute-books for better or for worse, only 40 constitutional amendments successfully emerged from preliminary contests and qualified for the final test match with the electorate. Of these, 25 were victorious. Most votes on constitutional amendments are reserved for the year of regular elections.

The determined attacks which students of county government in New York State have been making on the barriers which have prevented reorganization are at last attaining some success. At its regular session of 1933, the legislature passed and the governor signed a county home rule act sponsored by Senator Fearon, providing simply that any county outside of New York City might “adopt, pursuant to the provisions of this act, a county charter for the government of such county.” This act, however, did nothing effective to remove the considerable obstacles which the state constitution puts in the way of county reform, and was itself of doubtful constitutionality. It served only to throw a clearer light on the fact, already familiar to students of the subject, that in New York it is the constitution that has been the strongest bulwark of antiquated local government.

In his study, “Government and Society,” Professor Charles E. Merriam makes an interesting observation which may be interpreted by enthusiastic students of government as evidence of progress in the movement to reform the complex and obsolete electoral system prevailing in a majority of the states. “The number of elective officers,” he writes, “estimated at more than 750,000 in the United States, has decreased somewhat in states, counties, and cities under the influence of the short ballot movement. The number of elective offices in 202 cities decreased from 3,118 to 2,343 in the period from 1915 to 1929.” These observations are unquestionably indicative of the tendency to shorten the ballot and, if accepted without qualification or modification, the decrease noted is sufficient evidence of progress to offer encouragement to the supporters of the short-ballot movement.

The trends in state public utilities legislation which were clearly discernible in 1933 continued in somewhat modified form in state legislation during the biennium 1934–35. Only a comparatively few out of the vast number of proposed utilities measures became law. The laws enacted, however, contain features which if adopted generally may have far-reaching effect upon the future of state regulation of public utilities. The intended effects of such features are: (1) to further the creation of public corporations empowered to furnish public utility services; (2) to establish a new method of utilities regulation in the form of contractual relations between the federal government or federal agencies on the one hand and public utilities corporations on the other; (3) to stimulate municipal ownership and operation of selected public utilities.

Although few important changes have been made in the laws regulating primary elections during the last two years, some of those which have been made are novel and may foreshadow interesting future developments.

The year immediately preceding a presidential campaign usually brings some changes in the presidential primaries, and 1935 was no exception. North Dakota has repealed its presidential primary provisions, and in Oregon repeal was voted by the legislature but defeated at a referendum vote. Hereafter, delegates to the national nominating conventions in North Dakota are to be chosen by a state convention meeting at a time and place fixed by the party state central committee. The Oregon law, which was defeated, provided for the choice of delegates at large by the state central committee and of district delegates by district nominating committeemen.

As in previous lists, mention is here made only of units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order under general authority vested in him.

Accident Prevention Conference. Public Act No. 629, 74th Congress, approved May 28, 1936, authorizes an appropriation for the “furtherance of the work of the accident prevention conference,” to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of Commerce. The Conference met at the call of the Secretary of Commerce early in 1936, but it is not, speaking strictly, a government agency. The appropriation authorized may be used for “fostering accident-prevention work on the part of organizations engaged in the promotion of safety and accident prevention; preparation and printing of material designed to enlighten the general public in matters of safety and accident prevention, such material to be disseminated through schools, newspapers, magazines, the radio, or any other means of intercourse or communication; the preparation and attempts to obtain enactment of uniform vehicle regulations in the several states; clerical assistance for the members of the General Committee of the Accident Prevention Conference; travel expenses incurred by members of the General Committee of the Accident Prevention Conference in the furtherance of the work of said conference.”

The federal farm loan system is a government established, aided, and supervised organization, designed to render an economic service in the field of agricultural lending. Its main purpose is to create and keep open a continuous channel between the farmer and sources of surplus funds in large centers. It was founded nineteen years ago, and has been developed and amplified in order to pool the credit needs of individual farmers with good credit and good farms, and provide for them more nearly the same terms and rates extended to large industrial borrowers. These general rules may be said to govern the operations of its credit policy: (1) without attempting to make all agricultural loans, Farm Credit Administration endeavors to supplement the activities of other agencies, and to set a standard of costs of credit and the terms upon which such credit is extended to agriculture; (2) interest rates charged to farmers should bear a relation to the cost of money to the Farm Credit Administration in the investment market at the time the loan is made; (3) loans should be made with reference to the needs of agriculture and the biological cycle of production; and (4) loans should be made which are within the capacity of the farmer to pay, so that he may repay them out of farm income, minimize his indebtedness, and keep credit channels open for future needs.

Recent developments in Wisconsin in the field of county and town government indicate clearly that reform elements working within the electorate are not yet sufficiently powerful to overcome the forces of rural conservatism, political inertia and ignorance, and professional office-holding. Here, as elsewhere, county government remains in the grip of shrewd and stubborn opponents of reorganization. The forces of reform are not, on that account, to be under-rated. On the contrary, they show increasing evidences of realization of the nature of their function and the difficulties of their problem. Political education is being undertaken by a variety of agencies, and there exists ample indication of a genuine growth of popular interest in the needs of the state and its subdivisions.

May 20,1936, was a date of importance in Cuban history. Not only was it the thirty-fourth anniversary of the birth of the Cuban Republic; it marked the first time in seven years (as many Cubans maintain) that a completely constitutional government had control of the island's political destinies. On May 20 of this year occurred the inauguration of Miguel Mariano Gómez y Arias, sixth “regularly elected” president of Cuba, son of the Republic's second president, and the man who, at least nominally, will be at the helm of the Cuban ship of state in the immediate future.

On March 10, 1936, Rhode Island held a constitutional convention referendum for the first time since 1853. With what proved to be nearly everywhere a straight party set-up, the Republicans defeated the proposal for a convention by about 12,000 votes in a total of some 183,000. The principal issue was increased representation of the cities in the senate, although other changes in the state government were also given some attention. The contest for equality of representation in Rhode Island goes back at least to 1811. Under the present constitution, up until five years ago each city and town had one senator in a total of 39. Now Providence has four in a total of 42, although its population is 37 per cent of that of the state. No other city or town has more than one, although they vary in population from Pawtucket with 77,149 to West Greenwich with 402. Even in the house, Providence is entitled to only 25 per cent of the seats. With the increasing strength of the Democrats in the cities, the Republicans are naturally concerned to maintain the present representation. The small towns are anxious to keep their power; but that there is more to it than this is indicated by the fact that about a third of all the small-town senators have offices in Providence.

A balance sheet of local government in the metropolitan area of Chicago for the last five years would show that, while certain developments are tending to make government in the area more complicated, some progress has been realized toward simplified local government.

It becomes increasingly evident, for one thing, that non-governmental groups are organizing their work on a metropolitan basis. The Chicago City Manager Committee, for instance, is securing much of its support from people who do business in the city but who live in the suburbs. The Phi Beta Kappa Association of the Chicago Area, which was organized in 1935, has about one-third of its members living outside the city and about a tenth living outside the county. Consumers' coöperative stores in Chicago and suburbs are organized into a Chicago Coöperative Federation which issues a monthly “Chicagoland” paper.

Among legal philosophers, the time-honored dispute between natural-law schools and legal positivists arouses ever new interest. On the side of the positivists, the “pure theory of law” gains more and more ground. This theory is mainly represented by Professor Hans Kelsen, formerly of Vienna, now of Geneva, and by Professor Alfred von Verdross, of Vienna. In America, systematic consideration was first devoted to it by Dr. Johannes Mattern, who analyzed Verdross's thinking; later, Dr. Josef L. Kunz, one of the foremost followers of Kelsen, took up the discussion, emphasizing the importance of the theory for a scientific basis of international law; and quite recently an article by Dr. Henry Janzen dealt with legal monism as the basis of the “pure theory of law.”

During the first five months of 1935, interest in local governmental problems in Michigan was centered in the regular session of the legislature. The 1935 session should be congratulated on letting some measures lie fallow in committee and on defeating others. Among these bills were several which would have played havoc with the operation of the general property tax in local units. They would have provided for the blanket cancellation of delinquent taxes and for broad exemptions from the property tax. It was the defeat of such proposals rather than any positive program that redounds to the credit of the legislature.

Parochialism occurs as a problem when there is a combination of such factors as geographical isolation, independent historical traditions, racial or religious differences plus local or class economic interests. In New Mexico, one finds all of these factors present, and the variety of combinations produced by cross-currents and cleavages on party issues are kaleidoscopic. In the state, one finds a race-conscious group with social, economic, and cultural differences which mark it off from other people, and possessing a class solidarity in politics; and a distinct ethno-political alignment is the result.

Inquiries are ventures into the unknown. As instrumentalities of government, officially organized investigations are a relatively recent addition to the mechanism of politics. Leaving aside regular agencies of criminal procedure such as the grand jury, one may say that the emergence of investigating committees is closely connected with the growth of representative government. Parliamentary inquiries have come to be regarded as essential implements of legislative control over the executive branch. The present brief survey of German experience undertakes to show the potentialities and limitations of a different type of officially organized investigation: the executive inquiry.

In the application of statutes and regulations governing naturalization in the United States, an ingenious administrative device has been evolved which avoids the ineffectiveness and cumbersomeness of the ordinary courts as well as the abuses occasionally characterizing the non-reviewable action of executive agencies at the other extreme. Under an act of 1926, “preliminary hearings” on naturalization petitions are conducted by examiners of the Naturalization Service designated by federal district judges, and recommendations are made to the court which has jurisdiction to grant or withhold citizenship. The examiner resembles a master or a referee rather than an administrative tribunal; yet, unlike many officers of courts in equity matters, he is subject to effective supervision by his administrative superiors.

Governmental studies looking toward the reorganization of present political and administrative arrangements by Los Angeles county and Los Angeles city, respectively, have been a feature of recent months in the metropolitan region of the Pacific Southwest. Three separate reports have been prepared, two of which are before the public. Certain areas of substantial agreement in principle are found in these two reports, and it now appears that by joint agreement some far-reaching changes will be proposed as charter amendments to the Los Angeles county charter. The most significant of these proposals look toward simplification of structural arrangements through reorganization of existing governmental agencies in the county and the establishment of certain centralized agencies of county-wide administration responsible for minimum standards of service throughout the entire area and available for additional service to those local communities which through their local councils order and pay for it. Likewise, the reports agree in recommending the establishment of the county-manager form of administrative organization.

On February 6, the Ohio supreme court handed down a decision invalidating the Cuyahoga county charter. While this was a severe blow to those who had worked for years for the modernization of the sadly disorganized polity of this metropolitan region, by far its most serious aspect was the court's adoption of an interpretation of the constitution which in effect abrogated the procedure for the adoption of a county charter by a simple majority of those voting in the county. This decision has doubtless set back the reform of county government a minimum of five to ten years.

During the past year, the county reorganization problem has been attacked in Ohio along two fronts, corresponding to the two lines of procedure permitted by the state constitution. Under the home rule amendment adopted in 1933, the legislature is empowered to enact optional plans of county government and counties are also authorized to frame and adopt their own charters. The last twelve months have witnessed the first contests over the application of these provisions. A comprehensive program of county reorganization measures has been presented to the legislature and charters have been submitted in four leading counties. The principal accomplishment thus far has been the approval of the Cuyahoga county (Cleveland) charter by a substantial majority vote in the county as a whole.