At four o'clock on the morning of June 13, 1942, four men, in the fatigue uniforms of the German Marine Infantry, were landed in a rubber boat by two German sailors on the beach at Amagansett near the tip of Long Island, 125 miles east of New York City. They changed to civilian dress and then buried in the sand their uniforms and a supply of explosives, incendiaries, fuses, detonators, timing devices, and acids. They carried with them some $90,000 in American currency and had an elaborate list of American factories, railroad centers, bridges, power plants, water supply systems, and the like. They were accosted by an unarmed Coast Guard patrol. Alleging that they were fishermen, the four men sought the silence of the patrol first by threats to kill him and then by a bribe. He accepted $260, promptly reported the incident, and a squad of Coast Guardsmen shortly discovered the buried articles. A submarine was seen and heard off shore. The four men went to New York City.

Wings over Europe and the Far East are being spread from what was until last year mere Midwestern field and stream—Willow Run, now the site of the world's largest and most revolutionary bomber plant. Air supremacy for the United Nations may rest upon Henry Ford's adaptation of assembly-line methods from autos to airplanes. B-24 bombers now being flown from the hangars at the bomber plant are casting their shadows over the countryside round about. But months ago, the first shadows of Willow Run lengthened over the neighboring cities and villages. Rural residents are finding themselves in the midst of a metropolitan maëlstrom. Orchards, vineyards, wood-lots, and truck gardens are giving way to highways, trailer camps, and federal housing facilities. Population growth and changing land-use are staring the local urban and rural governments in the face. Immediate need for roads, public health service, zoning, and housing are problems which cut across the paths of national, state, and local authorities.

In recent political literature, pressure groups have frequently been condemned as a deleterious element in American government. One scholar in the field of political parties writes: “In the economy of democratic government the pressure group is definitely a parasite on the wastage of power exercised by the sovereign majority.” Another scholar uses the following harsh language: “There exist socially created constraints which emanate from less sanctioned or less responsible sources, informal and opportunistic in their operation; they fluctuate incessantly in intensity and direction. These constraints may be called social pressures…. In R. E. Park's comment: ‘The pressure group is not an army which seeks to win battles by frontal attacks on hostile positions; it is, rather, a body of sharp-shooters which pick off its enemies one by one.’” Another student of politics, in a denunciation of pressure groups, says: “It is a testimonial to the faith, the tenacity, or the credulity of the American people that after 150 years they still cling to the forms—without the substance—of democratic government. Since the founding of the Republic the democratic process has been perverted to a greater or less degree by cunning and powerful minorities bent on serving their own interests. The ideal of rule by the majority for the good of the many has been illusory from the start.”

The first session of the Seventy-seventh Congress witnessed much activity in both houses, resulting, however, mainly in appropriation measures and defense legislation. Most of the bills carried through to enactment were calculated to meet the expectations of the President as set forth in his annual message of January 6, 1941. In that message, the President assured Congress that the “future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders…. The immediate need,” he said, “is a swift and driving increase in our armament production.” Before the session came to a close, joint resolutions declaring war on Japan, Germany, and Italy were passed. Thus it was perhaps the most epoch-making and influential legislative year, for the future affairs of our people, of any since the “founding fathers” assembled in New York City on March 4, 1789, to start legislating under the new national constitution.

The problem with which your Committee has been concerned since its appointment early in 1941 is the place of Congress in the American scheme of government under the emergency conditions of peace and war that have prevailed during the past decade. We have asked ourselves such questions as these:

1. What changes have taken place in the relations between Congress and the Executive? Why? Has there been in fact any surrender of power and responsibility by Congress? If so, to what extent? How can an organic and continuous relationship between Congress and the Executive be established?

The battle over the tax-exempt security between the federal and the state and local governments has entered a new phase. Not content with merely taxing the income of new federal securities issued after March 1, 1941, the President, in his budget message to Congress of January 6, 1942, recommended legislation which would tax future state and local government securities, and the Secretary of the Treasury, in a speech in Cleveland on January 24, 1942, declared that it was high time to tax the income of outstanding issues as well. Up to this point, it had been the policy of the Administration to request only that the income tax be applied to future state and local government obligations.

In two administrations over a period of approximately eight years, President Franklin D. Roosevelt has established a record in his exercise of the veto power—not a record in quantity of measures disapproved, but a record in the wide range of subjects drawing his attention and his adverse action. President Cleveland, in his two non-consecutive administrations, retains the record for total number of measures disapproved, although President Roosevelt has run ahead of him in the use of the pocket veto. It should be noted, however, that most of the Cleveland vetoes were applied to individual pension or military relief bills. The practice of Congress in more recent administrations has been to combine pension and relief measures into one omnibus bill, to be consistently, although not always successfully, disapproved by successive presidents.

Among the many problems which the war has thrust upon the United States has been that of the proper treatment of the conscientious objector to compulsory military service. Our record in this regard during the first World War was not one of which a democratic nation could be proud. With the enactment of the Selective Service and Training Act of 1940, reconsideration of the issue was necessary. Now, after almost two years of experience with the administration of the Act, a systematized plan quite unlike that of the past has been formulated and placed in operation.

As in previous lists, mention is here confined generally to units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order or reorganization plans under general authority vested in him. Changes in units created by heads of departments or independent establishments are excluded unless of major importance.

Authority for General Reorganization. Public Law 354, 77th Congress, approved December 18, 1941, authorizes the President to make redistribution of functions among executive agencies; the authority is limited to “matters relating to the conduct of the present war” and excludes any part of the General Accounting Office and its functions. This act is to be in force during the continuance of the present war and for six months thereafter, or until such earlier time as Congress by concurrent resolution or the President may designate. At the termination of the act all agencies will exercise the same functions as heretofore or as hereafter by law may be provided, any authorization of the President to the contrary notwithstanding.

Erie v. Tompkins evidences decentralizing trends in our federal system in two different ways—one fairly obvious and relatively orthodox; the other neither obvious nor orthodox, but probably the more significant. The first aspect may be touched upon very briefly and the ramifications of the second explored more fully.

The obvious side of Erie v. Tompkins lies in its rejection of a common law of the United States available for application by the federal courts in diversity cases. This conception was given expression by Story in Swift v. Tyson, and has been followed in many, if not most, of the succeeding cases building upon and expanding Story's doctrine.

Emphasis on the study of public administration has in recent years become so marked that of all the fields in the study of government it stands out as the most rapidly growing. What Woodrow Wilson called attention to some fifty years ago has in fact become the center of interest in political science. No longer is hard study confined to the problem of making constitutions. The study of administration has concerned itself extensively with the processes and procedures, with the ways of carrying out public policy. However, Woodrow Wilson's advice, recommending the careful determination of the basic political conceptions necessary for the student of public administration, has not always been followed; and the present note is designed to suggest some factors bearing on these basic political conceptions. Specifically, it is to be emphasized that the means through which the state carries on its functions cannot be adequately analyzed except in relation to its ends.

A clause reserving to Congress the right to terminate by concurrent resolution (which has not for over a century and a quarter been submitted for presidential approval) powers delegated to the President or a department head appears in so many acts of the Seventy-seventh Congress that further consideration of its political and constitutional aspects seems appropriate. If its constitutionality is established, this clause enables a majority of both houses, when dissatisfied with executive conduct of any of these delegated powers, to terminate them. Leaders of the present administration, in Congress and in the executive branch, are aware of this possibility. Supporting the measure to extend the draft period, its author, Senator Elbert Thomas, said: “Broad authority is conferred by the measure, but that authority is expressly subject to revocation at any time by concurrent resolution of the Congress.”

The experience of recent years has shown that espionage, sabotage, and subversive propaganda have everywhere been preliminary to, and an integral part of, the program of Axis military aggression. That such activity constituted a threat of increasing gravity to the United States was recognized, even prior to our entry into the present war, by the enactment of legislation designed to strengthen our defenses against propagandist and subversive activities of foreign agents and organizations under foreign control, to tighten up the surveillance of aliens, and to make more rigid the requisites for naturalization. Since the United States became an active belligerent, additional measures have been adopted for the control of alien enemies and nationals of Axis origin.

As in previous lists, mention is here confined generally to units specifically authorized by law or established by the President by executive order or reorganization plans under general authority vested in him. Changes in units created by heads of departments or independent establishments are excluded unless of major importance.

Coast Guard. Transferred from the Treasury Department to the Navy Department by Executive Order 8929 of November 1, 1941, under authority of the act of January 28, 1915 (38 Stat. 800). On April 7, 1917, the Coast Guard was transferred to the Navy by Executive Order 2587, and on August 28, 1919, it was returned to the Treasury Department by Executive Order 3160.

The states can do little toward winning the war except to give their whole-hearted coöperation to the President's program for prosecuting the war. This coöperation is, of course, essential and of inestimable value; but the states are not engrossed in planning strategy, directing the war effort, or financing the struggle. By comparison with the federal government, they have immeasurably more time and energy available for engaging in other activities. This time and energy should be devoted to the achievement of something constructive; and the most constructive contribution which the states can make to our national economy is to devote themselves now to the task of preparing for a rôle of active participation in dealing with the serious problems with which we shall probably be confronted after the war. Even if those problems, for one reason or another, do not materialize, it is far better to be prepared for an emergency which never comes than to be unprepared for one which does come.

Town and city consolidation in Connecticut serves purposes similar to those of city and county consolidation. Duplicating corporate bodies and officials are eliminated, and one government provides those services that are required only in urban areas as well as those required by both rural and urban areas. In addition, by the use of separate taxing districts a method has been developed whereby the people of the entire area pay for the general services while the people in the urban area do, and the people in the rural area do not, pay for the special urban services. Thus, it is possible to bring together a farming area and a city area under one government.

In 1938, New Jersey established a State Department of Local Government which, although not as far-reaching in the scope of its authority as its name suggests, possesses extensive and, in some respects unusual, powers of control over municipal finance. The powers given to the Department then and subsequently include supervision of municipal accounting, fiscal administration, funding operations, budgeting, and auditing. Particular interest, however, in New Jersey and elsewhere has centered on the authority given the Department over municipalities in or approaching serious financial peril. Such municipalities were made subject to supervision administered with considerable discretion by the Department which, it was hoped, would not only check the course of localities headed for financial wreckage but also salvage and repair areas where the crash had already occurred. The experience of the Department thus far indicates that much has been accomplished on both scores, but also that there are clear limits to the possibility of restoring financial health to all of New Jersey's existing assortment of municipalities by virtue of the present treatments.

The war in the Pacific has focused attention on rubber as one of the key materials of peace and war economy. It has not only caused domestic adjustments in the United States as previously in other consuming countries, both allied and enemy, but has terminated an epoch in international rubber control. At the same time, it has accentuated the permanent international concern about basic materials—their location, accessibility, production, distribution, and utilization. Thus the international rubber régime, as it operated up to the disruption of trade-lanes and the invasion and devastation of producing areas, is of interest not only because of its effects in the period just ended but also as an approach to problems of international economic policy and administrative technique which are likely to continue into post-war world organization, no matter how different its political and strategical foundations may be.

There is little point to speculating at this time upon the historical significance of the resettlement of populations recently carried out in Europe. Yet the mechanics of a transfer of such magnitude are of interest, and a fairly adequate account can now be presented of the return of the Baltic Germans.

On October 15, 1939, Estonia, and on October 30, 1939, Latvia, signed treaties regulating this translocation of presons of German nationality. No agreement was made with Lithuania where, after the loss of Memel, there remained only about 30,000 Germans, mostly peasants.

With national defense problems paramount in the public mind, it is not surprising that developments in rural local government during 1941 revealed, more than in normal times, the imprint of national and world conditions. State legislatures, though their sessions preceded Pearl Harbor, devoted much attention to defense problems and assigned to local governmental units an important rôle in defense organization and activities. Various steps were taken to foster coöperation in the defense effort by government at all levels; and, in view of the necessity for large national expenditures for defense purposes, additional emphasis was placed upon the need for local economy. Concurrent with the various defense-related developments was a continuation of normal peace-time efforts to improve the organization and operation of rural local government. As in former years, the events of 1941 will be summarized under the following headings: (1) areas; (2) organization and personnel; (3) functions; (4) finance; (5) optional charters and home rule; and (6) intergovernmental relations.