and responsibility were humanly
possible, our National Government is unsuited for the task. The
electorate is too numerous and heterogeneous; its interests and needs
are too diverse. Shall the conduct of citizens of Mississippi be
prescribed by vote of congressmen from New York, or supervised at the
expense of New York taxpayers? Will an educational system suitable for
Massachusetts necessarily fit the young of Georgia? Such suggestions
carry their own answer. In the very nature of things there is bound to
be a reaction against centralization sooner or later. The real question
is whether it will come in time to save the present constitutional
scheme.

The makers of the Constitution never intended that the people of one
state should regulate, or pay for supervising, the conduct of citizens
of another state. They made a division of governmental powers between
nation and states along broad and obvious lines. To the Federal
Government were entrusted matters of a strictly national
character--foreign relations, interstate commerce, fiscal and monetary
system, post office, patents and copyrights. Everything else was
reserved, to the states or the people. Here was a scheme at once
explicit and elastic. Explicit as to the nature of the functions to be
performed by the National Government; elastic enough to permit the
exercise of all other powers reasonably incidental to the powers
expressly granted. The Constitution is not, and never was intended to
be, a strait-jacket.

Proofs abound of the adequacy of the constitutional scheme to deal with
changing conditions. For example, when the Constitution was adopted,
railroads, the most powerful economic force in our present civilization,
were unknown. Nevertheless, the Constitution contains adequate provision
for dealing with the railroads. They are instruments of interstate
commerce and may be controlled by the Federal Government under the
express grant of power to regulate such commerce. Similar considerations
apply in the case of those nationwide industrial combinations popularly
known as "trusts." Their activities are largely in the field of
interstate commerce and are subject to control as such by the Federal
Government. Theoretically, only such activities of the railroads and
trusts as are of an interstate character fall within the federal
jurisdiction. Everything else lies within the jurisdiction of the
states. However, a practical people will not long permit matters which
a