Government

The session laws of the states for 1927 show a development of the centralizing tendency in the organization of state government, and indicate that the single-headed department is gaining in the public mind as a means of carrying out the purely executive function of the government. It has not, however, displaced the board in the majority of the less populous states, where commissioners with overlapping terms still are dependent on to prevent the concentration of power over the business machine of the state in the governor, which is sought by the newer system. Where regulating, rule-making, or semi-judicial functions are to be exercised, the board persists, even in the states which have gone farthest toward centralization, and various devices are employed to keep them as free from political control as is possible in a democracy. The organizing spirit is in evidence even in the most recalcitrant of all departments of government to its influence. The system of courts has been organized under a judicial council, which, however, is strictly a "guild" organization of lawyers, judges in most states arising out of, and falling back into, the mass of members of the bar, owing to our system of election of judges. Deficiencies of purely local police organization are becoming more evident with the increasing development of the automobile as a handmaid of crime, and the great mobility of the criminal. State police, and now state criminal identification bureaus, evidence the emergence of the state as an administrative unit for the protection of its citizens against criminals. Faint beginnings appear of the central prosecuting agency with advisory functions to the local prosecutors. The organization of the air is proceeding apace, with the whip hand in Congress, but with the state governments finding aerial legislative territory unoccupied by Congress, in which they can exercise their imaginations. The Radio Commission is an interesting example of an administrative board adapted to protect not only the rights of the ndividual, but also the rights of various geographical divisions of the country against the possible tyranny of a single head of a department

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