UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 87 
1a 
y= 
to 
Sy- 
se, 
the 
ter 
ate 
an 
the 
cal 
ce- 
ies 
es 
230 
It 
wes 
5) 
res 
at 
de 
ch 
er- 
er- 
xd. 
Jie 
at 
ivy 
ve 
1d 
mn 
139 
ul, 
Te 
Ab, 
lie 
al 
V «9 
of 
IS 
nm 
le 
re 
it, 
n- 
3 
rh 
ur 
1 (Cs 
tion every point that has been raised with reference to the constitu- 
tionality of the legislation, and covers it conclusively. 
I should also like to file after that just a brief ehronology of the 
growth of the legislation on this subject. 
The CratrmMAN. It may be received. 
(The document referred to follows:) 
FEDERAL AID BILL—THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE EMPLOYMENT OFFICE BILL, 
5. 3060 
By Joseph P. Chamberlain, of Columbia University 
There are several Federal statutes which make or authorize appropriations 
offering Federal aid to the States in conducting certain charitable, social, and 
educational enterprises. The acts referred to are the Smith-Lever act (38 Stat. 
372), agricultural extension work in State colleges; the Smith-Hughes act (3, 
Stat. 929), for training teachers of vocational and agricultural subjeets and paying 
teachers’ salaries; the Smith-Sears act (41 Stat. 735), industrial vocational 
rehabilitation; the Federal highway act (42 Stat. 212), and the Sheppard-Towner 
act (42 Stat. 324), maternity and infancy welfare. 
Doubt of the constitutionality of the Sheppard-Towner act was expressed in an 
opinion by the attorney general of Massachusetts, 1822. (7 Mass. Law Quarterly, 
May, 1922, 67.) As a result, two cases were brought to the supreme court to 
enjoin its enforcement. (Mass. ». Mellon; Frothingham ». Mellon, 262 U. 8. 467, 
67 L. ed. 1078 (1922).) The first was brought by the State, claiming the act 
invaded the right of the State to loeal self-govenment and was a usurpation of 
power by Congress and that it imposed on the State an unconstitutional option 
either to yield its reserved rights or to lose its share of the appropriation. Con- 
sidering the suit as being brought by the State in its own behalf, the court said, 
“We are called upon to adjudicate, not rights of person or property, not rights 
of dominion over physical domain, nor quasi-sovereign rights actually invaded 
or threatened, but abstract questions of political power, of sovereignty of gov- 
ernment. No rights of the State falling within the scope of judicial power have 
been brought within the actual or threatened operation of the statute. If an 
alleged attempt by congressional action to annul and abolish an existing State 
government ‘with all its constitutional powers and privileges’ presents no justicia- 
ble issue, as was ruled in Georgia v. Stanton (6 Wall. 50, 75, 18 L. ed. 721, 724), 
no reason can be suggested why it should be otherwise where the attempt goes no 
farther, as it is here alleged, than to propose to share with the State the field of 
State power.” The court pointed out that no State rights were invaded merely 
by extending the option, and held that the question of usurpation of power, when 
nothing had been done and nothing was to be done without the State's consent, 
was not a judicial question, of which the court would take cognizance, but a 
political question over which the court had no jurisdiction. In short, the court 
decided that the act involved no State rights protected by the Constitution and 
that there was nothing contained in it t6 lead the court to find it unconstitutional 
as a usurpation of power. 
It also held that a State can not as parens patriae institute judicial proceedings 
bo protect its citizens who are also citizens of the United States from the operation 
of a statute of the United States, since, with respect to their relation to the 
Federal Government, it and not the State represents them as parens patriae. 
The other case decided at the same time, Frothingham ». Mellon, was brought 
Dy a taxpayer of the United States to enjoin enforcement of the act on the ground 
that the appropriation from the general funds increased the burden of future 
taxation and thereby took the plaintifi’s property without due process of law. 
But the court decided that though a taxpayer might sue to enjoin the illegal use 
of the money of a municipal corporation, his interest in the money in the National 
Treasury is so minute, and the effect of payment of the funds on future taxation 
is 50 remote and uncertain, that no action can be maintained to prevent enforce- 
ment of the appropriation. 
These statutes and the bill, drawn on their pattern, seem therefore to be free 
from possibility of attack in an action by a State or by an individual taxpayer. 
As to the objection made to the Federal aid acts that they are infringements hy 
Congress on the State rights of local self-government through the conditions 
imposed precedent to enjoying the benefits of the acts and that acceptances by 
the State would be void as an abdication of the State's sovereignty, Burdick (8