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The Federal Dilemma1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

J. A. Corry
J. A. Corry*
Affiliation:
Queen's University
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Extract

All federal systems of government have been subjected to severe strain in recent years. It is not Canada alone that has felt the onslaught of economic and social change. The German federation went down before the Nazi tidal wave. The Australian federation was hard put to it to weather its difficulties in the early thirties. The United States of America, the greatest of them all, has been through continuous rack and strain in the past decade. What the permanent ravages of depression and the New Deal on the federal structure will be is as yet far from clear. The devices of navigation to which the national and state governments have been driven are described by some as the rise of a new federalism to meet the challenge of new conditions and by others as the destruction of the independence of the states. Observers in the other countries concerned are equally at variance in their interpretations, except, of course, in Germany where the results are fairly conclusive. There have been so many bad guesses in predicting political trends in the past few years that the prudent will hesitate to lay bets. But the nature of the predicament which generates strain in federal systems has become sufficiently clear that the main elements can be outlined with some confidence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , May 1941 , pp. 215 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1941

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Footnotes

1

The author is indebted to the editors of the Canadian Banker for permission to reprint portions of an article, entitled, “The Crisis in Federalism,” which appeared in that journal.

References

2 The danger to the Canadian federation is underlined in a speech by Premier Bracken of Manitoba on Jan. 27, 1941, reported in the Winnipeg Free Press, Jan. 28, 1941, p. 11.

3 This is one of the many implications of an integrated economy. It is perhaps the principal reason why practically no progress was made towards unemployment insurance in the United States or Canada until the federal government took the initiative.

4 Melder, F. E., “Trade Barriers between States” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 01, 1940, p. 54).Google Scholar This number of the Annals is devoted to “Intergovernmental Relations in the United States” and contains many data and much discussion bearing on the subject-matter of this paper.

5 It may be retorted that the troubles of the state banks arose out of dislocations in the national economy. Such a retort merely emphasizes the entanglement of state and national affairs.

6 For a detailed study of the interdependence of state and federal legislation in the United States, see Clark, Jane Perry, The Rise of a New Federalism (New York, 1938).Google Scholar See also “A Symposium on Cooperative Federalism” (Iowa Law Review, vol. XXIII, 1928, pp. 455–616).Google Scholar

7 Key, V. O. Jr., “State Legislation Facilitative of Federal Action” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 01, 1940, p. 8).Google Scholar

8 Clark, The Rise of a New Federalism.

9 On the dominance of the federal government in recent years, see Graves, W. B., “The Future of the American States” (American Political Science Review, vol. XXX, 1936, p. 24).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Routt, G. C., “Interstate Compacts and Administrative Cooperation” (Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 01, 1940, pp. 97–9).Google Scholar

11 R. L. Mott, “Uniform Legislation in the United States” (ibid., p. 79).

12 J. P. Harris, “The Future of Federal Grants-in-Aid” (ibid., p. 14); Mac-Donald, A. F., “Federal Aid, 1940 Model” (American Political Science Review, vol. XXXIV, 1940, p. 489).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Harris, , “Future of Federal Grants-in-Aid,” pp. 18–23.Google Scholar

14 McBain, H. L., The Living Constitution (New York, 1927), p. 58.Google Scholar