The special Senate committee investigating presidential campaign expenditures presented its report on February 28, 1929. The report contains five pages of explanatory material and recommendations, and twenty-five pages of tabulations. The recommendations are not very sweeping, but they strike at four existing defects in our present federal corrupt practices act, namely, the failure to regulate the conduct of conventions and primary elections for the nomination of presidential candidates, to extend the law to political groups operating in individual states, to require careful and accurate itemization of every party expenditure, and to regulate the borrowing of money by political committees. The committee does not argue the constitutional points involved in its first two recommendations, and it does not reach the real problem involved in party deficits with its fourth recommendation. It leaves many vital problems to future committees.

The information collected by the committee, by means of hearings and correspondence principally, has been set forth in fourteen tables. There is much useful material in these tables, and several angles of the problem of party finance are clearly brought out by the figures. But there are some serious errors, especially in the tabulation of totals. Tables IV and V dealing with the national committee accounts are inaccurate and misleading. The proof of this statement is as follows. The accounts filed by the two national committees, both with the clerk of the House (according to law) and with the Steiwer committee, show that the Republican national committee received for its own purposes the sum of $3,814,000. On page 8 of the report we find the figure $5,715,000.

In all countries, the publications of the foreign office hold a peculiar position among government documents. Statesmen appear to be more reticent in informing the public on foreign relations than in regard to any other governmental function. This reticence seems to obtain in democracies as well as autocracies. There are exceptions, such as post-war Germany and Soviet Russia, where the new governments entered upon a policy of disclosing almost everything in past diplomacy for the purpose of exposing the incompetency of the Hohenzollern and Romanov régimes. But these exceptions are conspicuously few. It is, of course, too much to expect foreign offices to publish all diplomatic correspondence and official reports. Some of these communications concern private persons whose affairs should not be exhibited to public gaze. Other papers contain tentative proposals and counter-proposals made in the course of negotiations, and should not, in fairness to all governments involved, be published at the time. Finally, much of the correspondence is merely routine. Nevertheless, it will probably be generally conceded that in a democracy the people ought to have opportunity for wide information regarding the conduct of foreign relations.

In the United States the chief official sources of information include: the President's annual message, Foreign Relations, the Treaty Series, mimeographed press releases, the Register of the Department of State and other lists, and occasional documents issued by the Department of State. It has been the practice of the President to devote a large portion of his annual message to Congress to a resumé of international relations for the year.

Those who have followed the progress of administrative reorganization in Minnesota will recall that the reorganization act in that state established a commission on administration and finance similar to the commission with the same name in Massachusetts. Large powers of supervision over the financial affairs of the state are conferred. Among them is a provision that the state auditor may approve no warrant upon the state treasurer for an expenditure from an appropriation unless the object of the disbursement is one which has been approved by the commission. Every department, officer, agency, and institution is required to present for the commission's approval, each three months, an estimate of its needs for the following quarter.

The regents of the University of Minnesota, pursuant to the requirements of the act, had submitted to the commission for its approval in one of their quarterly estimates a request for authority to expend $40,000 to provide group insurance for the faculty and employees of the university. The commission declined to approve the item, on the ground that it might be taken as a precedent upon which to base demands for similar insurance for the employees of other state agencies. The regents were advised to apply to the legislature for specific authority. This they declined to do, as they claimed to have control of sufficient funds aside from legislative appropriations to carry the project through. The regents employed actuaries to prepare a preliminary report on the form of insurance contract to be used.

A protective tariff is constitutional. While most of us—Democratic party platforms to the contrary notwithstanding—had suspected that this was true, the Supreme Court, curiously enough, never passed on the question until its decision in Hampton v. United States. In that case the plaintiffs attacked the validity of the Tariff Act of 1922 on two grounds. In the first place, the so-called flexible tariff provision embodied in Section 315 was alleged to authorize an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the President. That section provides, in substance, that when the President, upon investigation, finds that differences in the cost of production here and abroad of articles produced in this country are not equalized by the tariff duties fixed by the act, he shall thereupon fix such new rates as will equalize these differences. The Court had no difficulty in rejecting this contention under the authority of Field v. Clark, in which the reciprocity sections of the Tariff Act of 1890 were sustained. Chief Justice Taft, speaking for a unanimous Court, reviews the general theory of the separation of powers and the doctrine that legislative power may not be delegated. He emphasizes, however, that each department may properly call upon the others for assistance “so far as the action invoked shall not be an assumption of the constitutional field of action of another branch.” The scope and character of this assistance, furthermore, “must be fixed according to common sense and the inherent necessities of the governmental coördination.”

No new constitution was adopted in any state in 1928–29, and relatively few legal problems concerning the amending process were decided during the year. The South Carolina court upheld an amendment proposed by the legislature and ratified by the voters notwithstanding attacks based on the inclusion of several subjects in the resolution proposing the amendment, the failure of the officers charged with the preparation of the ballots to print the amendment in full, and the absence of the title of the amendment from the journals of the legislature, the title being entered on the journals only as part of the resolution proposing the amendment. Such a provision as that contained in Article in, Section 17, of the constitution of South Carolina providing that “every act or resolution having the force of law shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title,” might well be held not to apply to resolutions proposing amendments to the constitution, but to be restricted in application to ordinary acts of legislation, thus distinguishing acts of legislation from constituent acts. The court did not consider this distinction, but settled the case on its merits, deciding that the resolution did not contain separate subjects, that the ballots need not contain the entire text of the amendment, and that it was sufficient if the resolution proposing the amendment containing the title was printed in the journals of the two houses.

A salient feature of the Soviet order set up in Russia by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is the provision for a single, mobilized political center, striving to organize all social processes to conform with its particular ideology and program. The Communist party is this political center of the Soviet Union, enjoying a monopoly of legality in respect of organization. Only an outline of the methods by which this political machine exercises its leadership is possible within the limits of the present note. The emphasis will be on the structure which the Communists have given to their party, in order more effectively to carry the responsibility of leadership assumed by them. The word “party” is used, but one has here an organization which differs sharply from political parties of parliamentary systems. Also in its relations to the formal governmental bodies the Communist party presents several features which differentiate it from the party systems of other countries.

The special methods of organization adopted and the peculiar position enjoyed by the Communist party in the Soviet Union permit of several theoretical interpretations. One of these is that the Revolution contemplated by the Communists has three distinct stages, of which only the second has as yet been reached. There was the successful seizure of power, finally consolidated after some three years of civil war. Then came the present period of transition, the length of which will depend upon the success of the party in the exercise of its leadership. Only the successful achievement of the present party leadership will bring the final triumph of the Revolution as the third and last period.

Steady progress in the improvement of the processes of public administration marked the year 1928, but possibly of even greater significance has been the development of research interest in administrative problems by organized bodies of public officials. The greatest hope for realization of higher standards of performance necessarily lies in the body of officials who are responsible for the conduct of public business, and their new interest in research as a means of discovery of improved methods is of great significance. Among the groups of officials who are breaking new ground in this direction are the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International City Managers' Association, the reorganized Civil Service Assembly, and some state leagues of municipalities. The appointment of four research fellows by the New York State Tax Department is also full of interest. Specific reference to some phases of their work will be made in the following paragraphs.

Academic interest in research in this field has also been exceptional. During the year Dr. W. F. Willoughby prepared for the Policy Committee of the American Political Science Association a survey of the institutions carrying on studies in public administration, and during the year also the Problems and Policy Committee of the Social Science Research Council appointed a special Advisory Committee on Research in Public Administration, the chairman of which is Professor Leonard D. White, of the University of Chicago. Other committees of the Social Science Research Council also have dealt with special phases of administration, especially the Advisory Committee on Industrial Relations and the Advisory Committee on Social and Economic Research in Agriculture.

The government at Nanking set up in April, 1927, by the Kuomintang (Nationalist party), in promulgating an “organic act” on October 4, 1928, took the title “national government.” On the seventeenth anniversary of the outbreak of the Republican revolution, October 10, 1928, the system of government provided for by the act was inaugurated. The act was drafted by the law codification bureau at Nanking and revised by a committee composed of Wang Chung-hui, deputy judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Hu Han-min, and Tai Chi-t'ao.

Since November, 1924, when, upon the ousting of President T'sao K'un, the “permanent” constitution adopted a year before was suspended, China has been without a fundamental instrument of government. The four intervening years, like the eight which preceded them, have been filled with interregional warfare. At Peking a provisional president, Tuan Ch'i-jui, was followed by a dictator, Chang Tso-lin. Elsewhere, regional capitals exercised the actual powers of government. From Canton in May, 1926, was initiated a campaign to bring all China under Kuomintang authority. The success of the campaign enabled the Nationalists to establish a government which received recognition by the United States on July 25, 1928, and has since been recognized by every state having important relations with the country. Japan has extended recognition of the government as de facto only.