Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Unemployment and old-age pensions; the public domain; sales tax; preserving the federal balance; bank taxation; the Hawes-Cooper Bill [regarding prison labor] and state institutional labor; and progress made in the war on crime

Points of Interest:

For the first time, Governors met in a Governors-only session (as had been recommended by then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York the previous year).

Governors also took up the idea of establishing a permanent research and fact-finding arm. The idea had originated with Dr. Charles E. Merriam of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. A foundation was ready to finance the organization until it could prove itself, after which states would be expected to assume financial responsibility. Governors disagreed about whether such an organization was necessary. Some felt that each state should be responsible for its own research, while others objected to the idea of any private funding being used to finance assistance for public officials, or to any potential for universities to have special influence with the Governors. After considerable discussion of the issue, Governors agreed to a resolution authorizing the Executive Committee to prepare a plan to be considered at the next Governors' conference for the establishment a research, service, and fact-finding body. [See resolution below]

Governor Roosevelt spoke in favor of unemployment insurance to help provide future protection against the severe effects of unemployment that were resulting from the Depression. With respect to employment and aging, Governor Roosevelt said the fact that industrial production outweighed consumption was resulting in considerable job losses, and that modern industrial efficiency methods were causing the age limit in the workplace to drop from between 65 and 70 to between 45 and 50.

Governor Theodore Christianson of Minnesota first used the term "cooperative federalism" in describing three categories of views on government centralization. Those views were that (1) extending the federal realm was necessarily good; (2) each level of government should perform the services it was best equipped to perform (competitive federalism); and (3) when uniformity was required, the federal government should prevail (cooperative federalism). The Governor recognized, however, the difficulty of objectively determining which level of government was best equipped to perform a task or when uniformity was in fact required.

Thornton Cook of the American Bankers Association appeared before the Governors to plead the case against bank taxation, which he said resulted in small capital and surplus as well as bank failures. Governors discussed the Hawes-Cooper Act, which required that beginning in 1934, all prison-produced goods and merchandise coming into a state be treated equally with goods and merchandise produced in-state. This condition was considered a blow to prison industries by making it difficult for a state's own prison products to compete with products coming from another state.

Governors discussed challenging the constitutionality of the act.

Memorable Quotes:

Governor George Dern of Utah said: "To be the real executive of a sovereign State ought to be a higher honor than to be a member of the National Legislature, especially when we remember that each State has two Senators but only one Governor, and that a Governor may appoint a Senator but a Senator cannot appoint a Governor."

Governor Dern also said: "The movies and the talkies have brought about the collapse of the threatre and the spoken drama has almost disappeared. Think of the actors, the musicians and the stage hands whose occupation is gone, to say nothing of the loss to the railroads, hotels, newspapers, bill posters and others. Where are the new jobs for these people to fill? I leave out of consideration the tragedy of the passing of an art that has delighted men since the most ancient times."

Regarding unemployment and retirement, then-Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York said: "There may, indeed, be periods in our future history when, for economic or political reasons, we may go through several years of hardship...we shall have in these periods new...'accidents' of employment...[such as] when, because of our lady friends, cotton products were replaced by artificial silk; such as the depression in what used to be called the spoken drama with the advent of the movies and the talkies; when, for example, 20 or 25 years ago we had the advent of a new invention, the automobile, revolutionizing a large part of the industry of the Nation. Something new in the way of a revolutionizing invention may come again in the next generation...against this, it seems to me that some form of insurance seems to be the only answer. Unemployment insurance we shall come to in this country just as certainly as we have come to workmen's compensation for industrial injury...the contributions to the insurance fund must not be limited to the State or National Government but must be shared by the workers themselves and probably also by the employers to a certain extent...today...old-age security logically and inevitably ties in with the whole problem of the unemployed...The only difference is that in the case of the old people their lay-off is permanent rather than temporary."

Regarding the establishment of a research and service arm for the Governors' Conference, Governor Roosevelt said: "...a secretariat of some form would be of great advantage, not merely as a clearing house of information for us, not a library bureau merely, but also a body to which we could go to obtain the opinion of Governors and other officials in other States on matters pertaining to...questions in our own States."

Resolution:
"Resolved, That the Governors' Conference hereby authorizes its Executive Committee to prepare and submit to the next Governors' Conference for consideration a plan for a permanent Administrative Committee to act as a research and service organization and as a fact-finding body to furnish any information on public questions which may be from time to time desired by the State governments or their various branches, departments, or bureaus."