ebb and flow through many administrations. Then the slumbering States,
turning restlessly in their complacency, at last awoke and raised a
mighty cry of "Centralization." They claimed that the Government was
taking away their rights, which may be correct in essence but hardly
just in form; they had lost their rights, primarily, not through
usurpation but through abrogation; the Government had acted because of
the default of the States, it had practically been forced to exercise
powers limited to the States because the States lapsed through neglect
and inaction. Then the Government discovered the vulnerable spot in our
great charter, the Achilles heel of the Constitution. It was just six
innocent-looking words in section eight empowering Congress to
"regulate commerce between the several States." It was a rubber phrase,
capable of infinite stretching. It was drawn out so as to cover
antitrust legislation, control and taxation of corporations,
water-power, railroad rates, etc., pure-food law, white-slave traffic,
and a host of others. But even with the most generous extension of this
phrase, which, though it may be necessary, was surely not the original
intent of the Constitution, the greatest number of the big problems
affecting the welfare of the people are still outside the province of
the Government and are up to the States for solution.

It was to meet this situation, wherein the Government and the States as
individuals could not act, that the simple, self-evident plan of the
House of Governors was proposed. It required no Constitutional
amendment or a single new law passed in any State to create it or to
continue it. It can not make laws; it would be unwise for it to make
them even were it possible. Its sole power is as a mighty moral
influence, as a focusing point for public opinion and as a body equal
to its opportunity of transforming public opinion into public sentiment
and inspiring legislatures to crystallize this sentiment into needed