CONSTITUTIONALITY OF NATIONAL LAWS 101 



water, the operation and maintenance charges fixed by the Secretary 

 of the Interior. 



I cannot draw your attention too strongly to the fact that in the one 

 decade just passed the Supreme Court proved in the above six impor- 

 tant instances that attorneys of greatest repute were wrong in their 

 claims concerning the constitutionality of laws or Executive actions. 

 If the proposition of your committee is not workable along constitu- 

 tional lines, we will perhaps be obliged ultimately to try for a constitu- 

 tional amendment as has been done in the case of the income tax, suf- 

 frage, and prohibition, and may be necessary to prevent child-life 

 devastation. One reason why the ridiculed intelligence of our con- 

 servation law clerks during the years 1905 to 1910 hit the right answer 

 when noted legal minds were guessing wrong was due to the principle 

 which we then evolved for approaching these questions ; namely, that 

 we should expect to find constitutional provisions on which to hang 

 valuable legislation, because the framers of the constitution declared 

 that one of the prime objects they were trying to attain in conceding 

 power under the constitution to the three branches of the Government, 

 was "to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings jof lib- 

 erty to ourselves and our posterity." The conservationists discerned 

 the "general welfare" in the natural resources, and were confident that 

 one great element of "liberty to ourselves and our posterity" depends 

 on preventing the perpetual acquisition or the permanent destruction of 

 natural resources by monopolistic private interests. 



Your Committee on Forest Devastation, consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, followed the above plan and determined that the "general 

 welfare" and the "liberty of our posterity," if not of ourselves, is 

 acutely endangered. I think no member of the Society doubts the 

 public need for legislation drastic enough to stop the forest devastation. 

 Then approaching the constitution with our eyes prepared and expect- 

 ing to find the constitutional permission for such a law, I am confident 

 that the Supreme Court would uphold the proposed National legisla- 

 tion on some of the following grounds : 



1 . The protection of our navigable streams from flood, drought, and 

 erosion by the prevention of harmful and ruinous lumbering along 

 the banks and upon the water shed of such streams. If not, I believe 

 our Appalachian National Forest legislation is unconstitutional, which 

 I certainly do not want to consider. 



2. I know that the Supreme Court held that the Child Labor Law 

 was unconstitutional. However, I believe there is a hundredfold 



