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