Hon. JAMES S. PARKER, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives. MY DEAR MR. PARKER: In compliance with your request of June 18 for a report on a bill (H. R. 12995), to provide that the United States shall cooperate with the States in promoting the general health of the rural population of the United States, and the welfare and hygiene of mothers and children, I wish to express my approval thereof. I think that it offers the opportunity for the development of adequate public health units in cooperation with the States; that it resolves in a reasonable way certain existing conflicts between existing branches of the Federal Government, and that it opens the way to control by public health authorities in the counties and States of vital health problems in which they are interested. RAY LYMAN WILBUR, Secretary. Sincerely yours, O MATERNITY AND INFANCY FEBRUARY 10, 1931.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed Mr. MERRITT and Mr. BECK, from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, submitted the following MINORITY VIEWS [To accompany S. 255] MINORITY VIEWS OF CONGRESSMAN SCHUYLER MERRITT In considering S. 255 the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce amended the Senate act by striking out all after the enacting clause and substituting H. R. 12995 with some important amendments. Legislation on maternity and infancy, after considerable preliminary work and agitation, was embodied for the first time in the socalled Sheppard-Towner Act, approved in November, 1921. The Sheppard-Towner Act was the result of the work of the Children's Bureau. It was advocated by Miss Julia Lathrop, who was then Chief of the Children's Bureau, and she stated in hearings before our committee, as recorded on page 17 of the hearings on that bill: And therefore we are responsible for this measure which has been placed before you. Some of its provisions are necessarily experimental. In those hearings the hope and belief were expressed that by means of the appropriation by the Federal Government, which should be apportioned among the States, interest in the care of mothers and babies would be so stimulated that the appropriation by the State would gradually be much in excess of the amount necessary to match the Federal appropriation, which the States were required to do in order to make a Federal appropriation available. The appropriations under the first Sheppard-Towner Act were limited to five years. in the belief that the work would be so well established at the end of that period that it would proceed without Federal aid. Hon. JAMES 8. PARKER, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, Chairman Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives. MY DEAR MR. PARKER: In compliance with your request of June 18 for a report on a bill (H. R. 12995), to provide that the United States shall cooperate with the States in promoting the general health of the rural population of the United States, and the welfare and hygiene of mothers and children, I wish to express my approval thereof. I think that it offers the opportunity for the development of adequate public health units in cooperation with the States; that it resolves in a reasonable way certain existing conflicts between existing branches of the Federal Government, and that it opens the way to control by public health authorities in the counties and States of vital health problems in which they are interested. RAY LYMAN WILBUR, Secretary. Sincerely yours, O MATERNITY AND INFANCY FEBRUARY 10, 1931.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed Mr. MERRITT and Mr. BECK, from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, submitted the following MINORITY VIEWS [To accompany S. 255] MINORITY VIEWS OF CONGRESSMAN SCHUYLER MERRITT In considering S. 255 the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce amended the Senate act by striking out all after the enacting clause and substituting H. R. 12995 with some important amendments. Legislation on maternity and infancy, after considerable preliminary work and agitation, was embodied for the first time in the socalled Sheppard-Towner Act, approved in November, 1921. The Sheppard-Towner Act was the result of the work of the Children's Bureau. It was advocated by Miss Julia Lathrop, who was then Chief of the Children's Bureau, and she stated in hearings before our committee, as recorded on page 17 of the hearings on that bill: And therefore we are responsible for this measure which has been placed before you. Some of its provisions are necessarily experimental. In those hearings the hope and belief were expressed that by means of the appropriation by the Federal Government, which should be apportioned among the States, interest in the care of mothers and babies would be so stimulated that the appropriation by the State would gradually be much in excess of the amount necessary to match the Federal appropriation, which the States were required to do in order to make a Federal appropriation available. The appropriations under the first Sheppard-Towner Act were limited to five years in the belief that the work would be so well established at the end of that period that it would proceed without Federal aid. Before the five years expired it was clear to those who advosated the measure that the interest of the States, certainly so far as appropriations were concerned, had not been stimulated sufficiently so that they would carry on the work without Federal aid, and application was made to extend the appropriation for two years. The then Secretary of Labor, Mr. Davis, wrote to the chairman of the committee on December 21, 1925: As the work is just getting under way in the States, it would be very wasteful of the expenditures already made if the appropriation were not extended at this time. There was, in the Senate, considerable objection to the extension, and as a result the extension was limited to two additional years, and the Senator from Texas, Mr. Sheppard, who was in charge of the bill, remarked that as a result of the amendment which had been put in in the Senate "The act of November 23, 1921, will be repealed on and after June 30, 1929, and the cooperative work authorized by that act will then cease.' Previous to the expiration of the act in 1929 a determined effort was made to have a further extension of time enacted into law, but that extension was not given, due largely to the fact that President Coolidge believed that legislation of this sort was unconstitutional or extraconstitutional and that it interfered with the rights and responsibilities of the States. Consequently the operations under the Sheppard-Towner Act came to an end on June 30, 1929. It is now proposed to revive the activities which were authorized by the Sheppard-Towner Act, with some changes in detail as to control, but so far as the present act will affect maternity cases the control by the Children's Bureau is not substantially altered. When the bill to extend the act was reported in the Sixty-ninth Congress the minority views were set forth, and the same objections which were then stated are still valid. Although they are often infringed, it is still useful to have in mind the views of the fathers of the Constitution as to the powers granted to the Congress and the powers reserved to the States. The powers granted to the Congress are defined as follows by Hamilton in No. 23 of the Federalist: The common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace, as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries. The powers reserved to the States are set forth by Madison in Nos. 45 and 56 of the Federalist, as follows: The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. By the superintending care of these (the States) all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. With the affairs of these the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant. It was stated in the hearings on this bill that there was no longer any constitutional question involved, because the Supreme Court had held in a suit brought by the State of Massachusetts that the Sheppard-Towner Act was constitutional. The fact is that the court expressly declined to pass upon the constitutionality of the act on the ground that neither the State nor a taxpayer had the right to raise the question of constitutionality in the suit then pending. The pro |