Thirteen years ago, the American Political Science Association directed its attention to the changing relation between our national government and the states. One of the speakers discerned in the tendency toward aggrandizement of national power, manifestations of the principle that sovereignity, unprovided for in extant forms, seeks to embody itself in new forms. The signal incompetence of the states in dealing with economic questions, together with their mendicant attitude towards the national government, was seen as the cause of the transfer to national authority of control over currency supply, transportation rates and methods, and the seeming disposition to transfer control over all corporations. Other speakers called attention to the great increase of national power under the commerce clause and under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution; and one, in a most thoughtful paper, openly challenged the federal system as established in this country, asserting that it showed disadvantages of increasing magnitude in comparison with a unitary system, and was out of harmony with the general environment of modern industrialism.

Writing in 1919, Mr. W. F. Willoughby declared that “at the present time few reforms of government in the United States are more urgent than that of the reorganization of the administrative services of our state governments, so as to put them upon the integrated or departmental basis.” This need for state administrative reorganization is now generally recognized, not only by political scientists and students of administration, but also by public officials and practical administrators. This is indicated by the large number of governors who, in public messages, have urged upon their legislatures the adoption of measures of administrative reform; by the investigations and reports of efficiency and economy commissions or similar bodies created in many states; and by the laws actually passed providing for administrative reorganization in Illinois, Idaho, Nebraska, Ohio, Washington, Massachusetts, and other states.

A movement of this character naturally follows the line of least resistance, and consequently the changes in administrative organization heretofore made have been through statutory enactment rather than through constitutional revision. Inasmuch as, in most states, a faulty organization of the administration is stereotyped in the constitution, thoroughgoing reorganization by mere statutory enactment is practically impossible. The constitutional difficulties which impede the movement for administrative reorganization should warn us against the insertion in the organic law of detailed administrative provisions.

An extensive reorganization of administrative offices in Ohio was accomplished by a law enacted in April, 1921, and in effect July 1st, 1921. That reorganization is taken as the central point of this discussion, not because persons outside of Ohio are interested in details of Ohio government, but because the Ohio reorganization is one of the latest of such schemes to be put into effect and because it has been considered to exemplify relatively well the principles which our leading administrative reformers wish to see applied in our state executive departments. There is nothing of more practical importance in this connection than to examine carefully the principles upon which these reorganizations are supposed to be based. The editor of the National Municipal Review pronounces the Ohio reorganization to be “a big advance in popular government;” and Dr. W. F. Dodd, one of our leading experts in state government, says that the Ohio reorganization “is perhaps the most effective yet planned in this country, except for the fact of the constitutional limitation of the governor's term” to two years. This paper will sketch, as briefly as possible, and at certain points roughly judge, the changes made by the Ohio reorganization act of 1921, and then try briefly to indicate my general attitude towards the objects and policies of such a reorganization.

During the past few years there have been numerous proposals to repeal and to modify the direct primary laws, and many changes have been made. In the opinion of those who consider the direct primary one of the leading political reforms of the present century, this activity is due to the machinations of the routed politicians conspiring to restore their power; in the opinion of others, less confident of the merits of the direct primary, it is the natural outcome of the defects which have appeared in the operation of this system. An examination of the more important changes proposed and of those made since 1918, may serve to throw some light on the situation at the present time.

Lack of space prevents the presentation in detail of the proposals for modifications of the direct primary laws which have appeared in the legislatures within the last three years. Of course the mere fact that a certain change was presented in the form of a bill furnished no indication of public opinion, nor of legislative opinion, nor of the strength of the advocates of the change. It is true, however, that several of the measures enacted were passed after one or more defeats.

Legal history teaches two doctrines, which seem at first glance diametrically opposed to each other, with reference to the current agitation concerning the dangers of federal encroachment. First, that the agitation, in so far as it is called out by a temporary accidental state of affairs due to the war, is ephemeral. On the other hand, the essential facts involved are of a type that are always with us. In other words, federal encroachment, when stripped of the mask and guise that temporarily makes it seem dreadful, is a perfectly natural phenomenon quite familiar to students of Anglo-American law, and, for that matter, of other legal systems.

When a central authority orders a local subordinate government to take a certain course of action under penalty, it is more than likely that the enforcement of the order will lead to difficulties, and it may even result in open defiance on the part of the local government. The effect is very different, however, when the central authority merely establishes a standard and promises to turn over cold cash to the local units which meet the standard. With governmental units as with individuals, rewards for work properly done are more likely to produce desirable results than punishment for failure to obey orders.