Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Emergency programs; licensing boards and monopolies; Social Security and welfare; and law enforcement

Points of Interest:

In opening remarks to the conference, Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio talked about a number of changing circumstances in our society, including the rising proportion of elderly in our population, and the migration from rural to urban areas and from agriculture toward manufacturing, processing, and related services. He also spoke of environmental conservation, referring specifically to the degrading effects of strip mining.

Since the last meeting, North Korea had attacked South Korea. Military and other defense officials discussed the Korean War and defense readiness both militarily and economically. And John Foster Dulles spoke of how the U.S. dealt with allies and former enemies after WWII.

Millard Caldwell, Administrator of Civil Defense, argued that while past warfare had been won or lost in the field, modern warfare would be won or lost on the home front, and we needed to be prepared for emergencies here. He spoke hypothetically, for example, about what would happen if one city or state were bombed, with a resulting burden of refugees on other cities and states and a need for help from military and medical personnel outside the region.

With respect to licensing boards and monopolies, Governor Lausche said it was important to determine: "...whether licensing boards haven't introduced an evil into our American democracy which is constantly narrowing the field in which the ordinary man may work, and limiting it to those who have become licensed, frequently under abuse of the law...[B]oards...begin with a salutary objective; they finally end with expanding the qualification needed to obtain the right to become licensed, and thus they limit and monopolize the field to and for a few." But he added that there was another monopoly outside the scope of the law in the form of apprenticeship rules promulgated by labor leaders, which denied people the right to work without unnecessarily-imposed restraints.

The Governors began their discussion of Social Security and welfare with reference to housing for the aged, particularly those who had become senile. Governor Thomas Dewey of New York said his legislature had concluded "institutionalization is not a good, modern approach to the handling of the aged....There should be development of individual housing or colonies so that husbands and wives can continue to live together. The great problem, of course, is that we are getting a much older population. Secondly, we are getting a generation which is living in four-room houses instead of eight-room houses. We are just inevitably finding a combination of the pressures of the day to drive the old people out of the home of the young folks, many of these beyond the control of anyone."

Governors talked about the fact that the federal government's rule against releasing names of welfare recipients made it difficult for states to control welfare fraud. And they discussed lifestyle and its effect on welfare. Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia said that his state had enacted legislation limiting aid to dependent children to one ‘illegitimate' child per family, to which Oscar Ewing, Administrator of the Federal Security Agency, said: "...I did notify the state of Georgia that this did not conform with the federal statutes, for the simple reason that the test that was being applied by the state...had no relation to the need of the child...," and he went on to state that a child should not be punished for his/her parents' behavior. He also referred to the conclusion of a study "...that of the families that were applying for public assistance between 1942 and 1948 there was a 40 per cent increase in illegitimacy among them, but for the country as a whole, during the same period, there was a 60 per cent increase in illegitimate children, so, to the extent that these figures have any bearing on the problem, they would indicate that the public assistance is not a factor contributing to the increase of illegitimacy...There is not [a] question in the world, however, that one of our most serious problems is an actual breakdown in the family..."

Governors went on to talk about which level of government was most capable of rooting out fraud and administering welfare programs. Governor Alfred Driscoll of New Jersey took the position that states had traditionally been the level of government to experiment with new theories of program development and administration that were suited to their specific needs, but that the federal government had now intervened to impose restrictive national standards that discouraged the experimental tradition.

With respect to law enforcement, Governors discussed organized crime and its relationship to gambling.

Memorable Quotes:

Millard Caldwell, Administrator of Civil Defense, said: "With the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the character of warfare has changed. Up to that time, wars were won and lost in the field. From that time...wars will be won or lost on the home front."

Governor Sid McMath of Arkansas asked: "Is it feasible to encourage employers to raise their retirement age, so as to continue the period of usefulness of the individual employees? It seems that we are going to live longer, and certainly our productive period and our period of usefulness could be and should be extended."

Governor Alfred E. Driscoll of New Jersey said with respect to welfare administration: "...there was a time when the states were the laboratories in which we tested old values and tried new theories before they were applied nationally. Today the national government places the states in figurative 'straight jackets' composed of so-called national standards that the states must accept or [be given] no assistance by the federal government...if we adopt your philosophy, we are eliminating one of the basic and historic purposes of the states, namely, their right to experiment and to have those experiments conducted within laboratories of reasonable size."

Governor Fuller Warren of Florida, referring to Estes Kefauver, said: "...a shyster politician, who is running hard and desperately...for President of the United States...finagled for himself the chairmanship of a special committee of the United States Senate for the alleged purpose of investigating interstate crime in the United States..." [and then targeted Florida]. Selected

Selected Resolutions:
(1) Urging that Congress provide for a well conceived civil defense program and enact legislation to ensure exclusive federal responsibility for indemnification of voluntary civil defense personnel injured or killed, and that states ratify the uniform interstate civil defense compact developed by the Council of State Governments (CSG) and the Federal Civil Defense Administration; (2) urging that states move toward uniformity in highway safety and motor truck regulation; (3) urging that Congress give consent to interstate compacts before it; (4) opposing legislation to transfer state employment services to the U.S. Department of Labor; (5) requesting CSG to study and report on ways in which states might work to prevent and cure mental illness; (6) declaring that publicizing of welfare rolls was a matter for determination by individual state; (7) urging statehood for Alaska and Hawaii; (8) requesting CSG to survey professional and occupational licensing practices of the states; (9) requesting CSG to draft suggested state legislation to control organized crime, while at the same time insisting that primary responsibility for elimination of such crime existed in the vigilance of local law enforcement; and (10) authorizing the appointment of a special Governors' committee to confer with Congress in the effort to secure a commission and appropriate formula to promote a return to a working federalism, thus helping to achieve better efficiency and service to the public and between levels of government.