emulated about eighty years later with passage of British North America Act, 1867, which created Dominion of Canada as federal union within British Empire. Since then, federal idea caught on and has spread to all continents, adapting itself to local circumstances and to experiences of history with varying degrees of success. The mortality rate among federations was and remains high, witness recent demise of West Indian Federation, Ghana-Guinea, Mali-Senegal, Central African Federation of Rhodesia-Nyasaland, and 1958-61 United Arab Republic. Although never considered perfect, only lately have serious cracks appeared in federal structure of two older federations, American and Canadian. In 1939 Harold Laski observed that assumption that a creative America must be federal America, and that the wider powers exercised from Washington, more ineffective will be capacity for creative administration, was more than any philosophic pattern responsible for malaise of American democracy.' His plea was for recognition that federal form of state is, or was at that time, unsuitable to stage of economic and social development that America has reached. Laski expanded his argument to include Canada, among others, exemplifying need for drastic constitutional revision, since historic division of powers impairs need for social and economic reconstruction. He argued, first, that there were certain objects of administrative control left to constituent units, that is, states or provinces, for which they were no longer suitable instruments of regulation. The areas of health, education, unemployment compensation, labor conditions, railroad rates, and electric power should be centralized, that is, placed under complete federal control. Second, that proper objects of federal supervision cannot any longer be dependent upon constituent unit consent. Laski's thesis was based on assumption that large capitalist enterprises, such as du Pont in Delaware or Anaconda Copper in Montana, out-class, in terms of power, power of state in which they operate; as he put it . .. formal powers of states are rarely commensurate with actual authority they may venture to exercise. And it is common citizen of United States who pays price of that margin