Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

State expenditures, state reorganization; financial reorganization; states' rights; prison-made goods; and uniform state laws

Points of Interest:

Governors discussed how to deal with the increased expenditures brought about by war. It was also noted that costs had risen for education, bonuses and pensions, highways, charities, hospitals, corrections, natural resources, health, and sanitation.

During discussion of inheritance and income taxes, Governor John Trumbull of Connecticut argued that federal credit for payment of state inheritance tax induced states to impose that tax, forcing rates up.

The National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor report was presented, which gave information on individual area conferences on the allocation of prison labor. A question was raised regarding the extent to which prison labor competed with free labor.

Memorable Quotes:

Walter Brockway said: "The war, the automobile, installment buying and rayon as a fabric, have so completely altered the times that business has been practically reconstructed. The process of transportation has altered to the extent that it does not talk the same language it did twenty years ago."

Governor Walter Pierce of Oregon said: "One of my predecessors, Silvester Pennoyer...received a telegram from President Cleveland warning [him] of the dangers of internal disorders in his State. Pennoyer promptly wired the President: "Attend to your own business and I will attend to mine."...I often wonder what my grand old predecessor of forty years ago would do today, if from the shadows he could come back and behold Federal officials riding rough-shod from one end of the State to the other, telling us how to raise our babies, what trees we can cut, what water power we can develop, what power lines we may establish, what gopher we can kill, and in what spot we may shoot the coyote....How would you [Eastern Governors] feel...to have more than half your territory...entirely beyond State control, non-taxable and under the jurisdiction of an absentee landlord? It makes us feel as if we were trespassers in the land of our birth."

Governor George Dern of Utah said: "...the Civil War was fought directly because the free labor of the North objected to competing with the slave labor of the South, and I think the free labor of today is objecting to competing with the slave labor of our prisons...I realize, as all of the other Governors do, the importance of keeping the prisoners employed...but I am finding it a very perplexing problem...no matter what kind of manufacturing you select, you are competing with someone."

Resolutions:
(1) In response to evidence of corruption and excess expenditures on elections, the Executive Committee should include in the 1927 annual meeting program agenda a discussion of steps--including statutory measures--to fight the problem; and (2) urging Congress to work for passage of legislation to aid agriculture to attain equal footing with other industries for the world's market.