Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Interstate compacts and agreements; rural credit; income tax; prison management; and industrial relations

Points of Interest:

It was noted that a Committee on Inter-State Compacts had reported four fields of state action in which compacts could be used to advantage: administrative control of commerce and industry; penal and police measures; commercial laws; and commercial law with foreign states. Governor McCray of Indiana stressed that once uniform laws were enacted, it would be necessary to prohibit any one state's amendment to its law without the mutual consent of all states that were parties to the compact. Governors also discussed duplication of taxing under federal and state law and the most equitable way to tax income.

Labor disputes were of deep concern to Governors, who discussed the rise of union-supported job specialization and its effects on production, the use of tribunals to settle labor disputes, and the possibility that agricultural labor might seek to unionize. Although some Governors wanted to adopt a resolution protesting further concentration of power in Washington (e.g., a new federal law controlling intrastate orders regarding freight and passenger trains), they were reminded of the Conference's unwritten rule against adopting resolutions having to do with federal legislation.

Memorable Quotes:

Governor D. W. Davis of Idaho said: "When the coal fields of Pennsylvania are gone, you will come west to Wyoming and Utah...And when all the oil is taken out of the wells, you will find in the western state, millions of barrels of it in the shale which fills the mountains."

Governor Henry Allen of Kansas spoke of skill specialization, using the example of the removal of a nozzle tip from the front of a locomotive: "...under the new classification you send for a boiler-maker to open the door, and then you send for a pipeman to do some small part of the job, and then you send for a machinist to remove the nozzle...That whole thing was performed before the war by one man...but there is no such thing now."