cated
giving Congress the power to grant charters of incorporation. The
proposition, however, did not find favor, Mr. King suggesting that it
might foster the creation of mercantile monopolies.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Farrand, "Records of the Federal Convention," Vol. II,
pp. 615-616, 620.]

This objection would scarcely be urged to-day, when the country-wide
operations of the so-called "trusts" have given them a national
character and made their control by federal power a practical necessity.

XIII

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

In the preceding pages we have observed from various viewpoints the
impressive phenomenon of federal encroachment upon state power. It must
have become obvious to the most casual reader that the tide is running
swiftly and has already carried far. Hamilton was mistaken when he
predicted in the _Federalist_[1] that the National Government would
never encroach upon the state authorities.

[Footnote 1: _Federalist_, Numbers XVII, XXXI.]

What then of the future? Is the Constitution hopelessly out of date? Are
the states to be submerged and virtually obliterated in the drift toward
centralization? No thoughtful patriot can view such a possibility
without the gravest misgivings. The integrity of the states was a
cardinal principle of our governmental scheme. Abandon that and we are
adrift from the moorings which to the minds of statesmen of past
generations constituted the safety of the republic.

No mere appeal to precedents and governmental theory will check the
current. The Americans are a practical people, moving forward with
conscious power toward the attainment of their aims, along the lines
which seem to them most direct. They are more interested in results than
in methods or theories. Experience has demonstrated that federal control
often spells uniformity and efficiency where state control had meant
divisions and weakness. They favor federal control because it gets
results.

There is another aspect of the matter, however. The burden of federal
bureaucracy is beginning to be felt by the average man. He is being
regulated more and more, in his meats and drinks, his morals and the
activities of his daily life, from Washington. If he will only stop and
think he must realize that no one central authority can supervise the
daily lives of a hundred million people, scattered over half a
continent, without becoming top-heavy. He must realize, too, that, even
if such a centralization of power