Seven Southern State Capitals

Abstract

T HOME and abroad, on the public platform, in National and State forums, in private conversations and through the printed page the South has defended the doctrine of Rights. In a day when the sons of those who staked their lives in an effort to put their theories into practice are accepting federal aid and directioni while their Northern cousins are declining similar service on the ground that it would be a transgression of State Rights, we may well ask ourselves whether, in facing a new alignment of political theory regarding the relation between the Frderal Government and the States, we cannot open up the subject for discussion on its merits. When the Colonists were resisting the arbitrary and unreasonable dictation of an hereditary motnarch far removed in space and understanding from their pioneer problems, it was only natural that the sturdy settlers should have stressed the 'rights of which well-defined and rather isolated geographic communities which were later perpetuated in the thirteen original States. Today, except for tradition, psychology and sentiment, State lines mean little. Who can deny that Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky or Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas or Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa could be united under a single government and physical plan with profit to the residents? Reasoning along these lines somne of our modern Mr. Fixits have jumped to the conclusion that we should have a new deal in States which would recognize natural regions and result in a better-balanced national Congress. The difficulty with such a proposal is that communities are dynamic, not static, and populations have a way of spreading across rivers and over hills and around lakes so that the boundaries of the region of yesterday are lost in the new limits of the region of today. Taking it all in all, therefore, we may as well proceed on the theory that the States as they are constituted, with occasional readjustments which may result from conscious local demands, furnish as useful administrative units as could be devised by the arbitrary subdivisions which would surely be set up by the Federal Government if the impossible were to happen and and all State lines were swept away. For it is inconceivable that the three thousand and odd sinall counties or New England towns could cog their local self governments directly into the great Federal wheel without intermediates. Moreover the great historic heritage of each State and the fact that its citizens accept its boundaries, love its landscape and feel price in its achievements, makes the State a potentially effective unit of administration. Rhode Island and Texas may seem inconsistent in more ways than in equal Senatorial representation in the