CHILD LABOR BILL PASSED.

Congress passed the Keating Anti-Child Labor Bill and it was signed by the President Sept. I.

The measure prohibits the interstate shipment of goods manufactured where children under fourteen are employed, or of mine and quarry products produced where children under sixteen are employed.

LIMITATION OF STATE CONSTITUTIONS.

Section I, Article XIV of the Constitution ordains that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The fifteenth amendment extends the right of citizenship to the colored people, and gives the men the right to vote when of age. "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety shall require it." The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.

"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility." * "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or contract with another state or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay." (§ 10, Article 1.)

When the federal constitution was framed it was assumed not only that the protection of the personal and property rights of the citizens of each state would remain with the states themselves permanently, but also that as the federal government was to be a government possessing only enumerated powers. "No general guarantees to individuals against the improper exercise of authority on the part of the federal government was necessary."21, McClain's Constitutional Law of the United States.)

It should be the pride of all loyal citizens to preserve the

state governments as a model of excellence and compactness with the lines firmly drawn defining their local privileges. The state government, like the general government, has its powers distributed among several branches, and according to the fundamental principles of representation, each of these branches, as the legislative, executive and judicial departments, becomes in its respective sphere the immediate and equal representative of the people.

"The state constitutions recognize three coördinate departments of government: the legislative, the executive and the judicial. By these constitutions and in general by all state constitutions framed after the original state constitutions, the governor as the head of the executive department is head of the state. He is chief administrative officer, charged in a general way with the enforcement of the laws; he is at the head of the military establishment of the state; and he has the pardoning power. He has also some functions to perform in connection with the legislative department." (McClain refers to J. I. C. Hare. Constitutional Law, lecture 10. James Bryce's American Commonwealth, Chapters V, VI, XX, XXI, XLI.)

"The federal government, although a government of limited and delegated rather than general powers, has such implied powers as may be necessary to the reasonable exercise of the powers granted."

"Many state constitutions include clauses either expressly reserving to the people the ultimate sovereignty, and all powers granted by the constitution to the government, or expressly limiting the departments of government to the exercise of the powers conferred."

It was this disconnection of the southern states from the supremacy and jurisdiction of the central government, and their isolation from the direct influence of the more progressive Eastern states, which led to their enstrangement from the Northern states. The local dictators, who, claiming the sovereignty of the states, which meant their individual supreme dictatorship, defied the central and federal government. This demonstrated the fallacy of state rights as against a supreme and central government.

It was this deference to the supposed sovereignty of the Southern states which held President Buchanan back from acting promptly in 1860.

CHAPTER VII.

NATIONAL VERSUS STATE SOVEREIGNTY.

From the earliest history of the constitution, and before its adoption, the citizens of the United States have been divided upon the question as to the sovereignty of the general government, and state sovereignty. It was first the Federalists against the Anti-federalists or Republicans; then it was the Democratic party under the leadership of Jefferson, versus the Federalists. Then by some strange freak of nomenclature, the controversy was continued between the Democratic party and the present Republican party.

Abraham Lincoln, who was the founder of the Republican party, advocated the supremacy of the general government within its own appropriate sphere, and limited only as provided for in Article 10, amendment to the constitution, which states that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

"The cantons of Switzerland are sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the federal constitution, and as such they exercise all rights not delegated to the federal power. The two sovereignties must be coexisting, and the first question is, how to balance them against each other, in such a way as to prevent any due preponderance of either."

"The internal history of Switzerland clearly shows the existence of a double sovereignty in the confederation—the one federal, and the other cantonal, and instances abound of their frequent opposition to each other."-(Sir Francis O. Adams, on the Swiss Constitution.)

The constitution of the United States does not admit of a similar double sovereignty. Abraham Lincoln held that "acts of violence within any state or states against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. That one of the objects of forming and establishing a constitution in 1787 was to form a more perfect union." This would tend to indicate the superior, or sovereign power of the national government, composed of the executive, legislative and judicial departments. The latter has

the power of construing the constitution and the question of sovereignty where there is a conflict as to authority.

The Democratic party advocated state rights as its pet theory, following Jefferson, who was elected on the first Democratic ticket.

"The chief source of hostility against national sovereignty," as stated by James Bryce, "is the belief that a strong central government endangers both the rights of the states and the liberties of the individual citizen.' "Consolidation would extinguish the state governments and the local institutions they protected." The southern states were afraid of the overthrow of slavery and stood out for state sovereignty.

These theories, that obtain even since the civil war regarding state rights, cannot be maintained in the United States without sooner or later bringing the state governments into collision with the national government. Some day the national government will attempt, with the approval of the Supreme Court, to exercise some rights it will claim to possess, but which a state or states will deny, and the result will be a dispute as to the assumed rights of the state. It will then be like two sovereigns, contending for supremacy over the same territory, as in the case of the civil war.

It has been stated that "no one who properly understands our form of government doubts that each government and department thereof, is sovereign in the exercise of power belonging to it." Although each government may have specified and limited powers granted to it, only one power, that comprised within the range of the national government, is sovereign when the two are disputing about their supreme power in any particular. Webster defines sovereign as "superior to all other, highest, predominant, independent of any other: sovereign state, a state which administers its own government and is not dependent upon and subject to another power: Sovereignty, the exercise of, or right to exercise supreme power."

The arguments set forth to prove that each government, state or national, is sovereign in the exercise of powers that belong to it, are fallacious as to the meaning intended to be conveyed to the people, for although they each have specified powers, only one can be sovereign.

This sovereign power in the United States is vested in the citizen-voters of the nation. They have delegated certain limited powers to the national government, and certain limited powers to the state governments; and the state and national governments can only exercise those limited powers; but if there is a conflict as to which possesses the sovereign power in a disputed case, the state must peacefully abide the decision of the

Supreme Court, one of the branches of the national government. Every intelligent voter should be able to understand that fact. According to this construction, when we compare the powers of the state governments with the powers of the national government, comprising several distinct branches including the judicial, they must admit that the latter, having the power through the United States Supreme Court of giving the final decision on all disputed acts of the legislative branch and the meaning of all provisions of the constitution and on all questions of controversy between the states and the nation, is the higher and supreme law of the land. Under this construction also every voter, being part of the sovereign power of the nation, has a right to protection from one of the different agencies which he has assisted in instituting and supporting which is capable of rendering relief, if any rights, such as his privilege to vote, his personal liberty, or his right of free speech, are interfered with by a combination of individuals, or even by a state.

If the word sovereign is to be used, it cannot be appropriated by two distinct powers in the land. It must be stricken out before the word state, or before the word nation. A portion of our countrymen have elected to strike it out before "state," and leave it in before the word "nation," as it covers the vast power of the national legislature, and the power granted the Supreme Court of final decision on controverted points. Another portion of our citizens, however, practically strike it out before "nation" and leave it in before "state." It is an incontestable fact that two sovereign powers cannot exist over the same territory at the same time. This applies to America as well as to European states or governments. Switzerland has tried it, but found it unsatisfactory and unreasonable.

No such contrary forces have ever been maintained successfully in any substantial government. They have proven to be very dangerous elements to contend with in our government, and in Switzerland, when the attempt was made to enforce them. As the people of every state are represented in the three branches of the national government without distinction, they should fear no evil from that government, if they properly understand and exercise their right under the constitution. It is only when they commit a wrong as a state, or a combination of states, that they come into collision with the constitution, the same as a man who steals comes into collision with the laws of the state.

All the slave states objected to relinquishing the sovereignty of the individual states, but nevertheless ratified the constitution. Lincoln stated in his first inaugural address that when an association of states is made by contract merely, it can