Editorial: On the right track
We’ll have more to say about the St. Louis conference of Republican governors, under the leadership of presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, when we see the complete result of their deliberations. Meanwhile, it seems to us, the six reports they made yesterday were a good start in their effort to define clear “areas of responsibility” between the states and the federal government.
Criticism of the trend toward federal centralization which has been so marked in the last 11 years will be most effective, we think, if it emphasizes the truth that concentration of power in Washington leads inevitably to confusion, duplication of effort, waste, inefficiency, and invasion of legitimate and necessary local rights. This, as the governors are pointing out, has been happening in many fields, and nowhere more strikingly than in the matter of increasing federal ownership of land.