USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 4
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When it comes to authorizing initiative petitions for pro- posed laws, the new provision simply states that "a vote shall be taken by yeas and nays in both houses before the first Wednesday of June upon the enactment of such law in
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EMERGENCY LEGISLATION
the form in which it stands in such petition." This require- ment eliminates the possibility of rejection by the General Court on any of the various stages preceding the usual final question on enactment.
EMERGENCY LEGISLATION
Article XLVIII contains one other provision which affects procedure to such an extent that amendments of several rules were necessitated. The General Court was authorized to declare certain laws of general application to be emergency laws. "A law declared to be an emergency law shall contain a preamble setting forth the facts constituting the emergency, and shall contain the statement that such law is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety or convenience. A separate vote shall be taken on the preamble by call of the yeas and nays, . and unless the preamble is adopted by two-thirds of the members of each house voting thereon, the law shall not be an emer- gency law."
As a result, 71 bills were enacted as emergency laws in 1919, 65 in 1920, 47 in 1921, and 39 in 1922; a total of 222, on each of which the emergency preamble was adopted by the required yea-and-nay vote. In about four-fifths of the bills the vote was unanimous. These roll-call votes consumed time that might perhaps have been given to more important matters. During the legislative session of 1918 there were, on all matters, 107 roll-call votes in Senate and House. In 1919, during which the emergency preamble was used for the first time, there were 367 roll-call votes. Hence steps were taken in 1920 to establish' a less rigid procedure with refer- ence to preambles. An amendment (Article LXVII) was approved November 7, 1922, providing that a separate vote should be taken on each emergency preamble, but need not be by roll call unless that method of voting was requested by two members in the Senate or five members in the House. There- fore, beginning with the session of 1923, preambles have been adopted by rising vote, and in only one instance has a roll call been requested.
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GENERAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS
LONG TERMS OF SERVICE
Thomas Power ("Tay Pay") O'Connor, who died in 1929 during his forty-ninth year of service in the House of Com- mons, and David Lloyd-George, who is serving his thirty- ninth year in that body, have had no counterparts in the recent history of the General Court. In colonial days and later there were men of merit who served as legislators for a generation or more. During the forty-year period under consideration several State senators made noteworthy records. Walter Mc- Lane, of Fall River, served seventeen consecutive years. Samuel Ross, of New Bedford, served five years after fifteen in the House, not consecutive. Alvin E. Bliss, of Malden, served nine years following nine non-consecutive years in the House, and later became councillor. George C. Chamberlain, of Springfield, served twelve years, following four years in the House, all consecutive, and then entered the Council.
In the House Henry Achin, Jr., and Victor F. Jewett, from the same district in Lowell, served their nineteenth consec- utive year in 1927; Roland D. Sawyer, of Ware, his seven- teenth; and Michael H. Jordan, of Lawrence, his fifteenth. Not long since, Edward F. Harrington, of Fall River, com- pleted sixteen consecutive years of service, and John Mitchell, of Springfield, and Chauncey Pepin, of Salem, fifteen each. Between 1877 and 1910, inclusive, James H. Mellon, of Wor- cester, served nineteen years in the House. Senators who afterward served in the House for long terms are Andrew P. Doyle, of New Bedford, and Martin Hays, of Boston, each with a total of twenty years, the latter still in service; and Martin M. Lomasney, of Boston, and William P. Hickey, of South Boston, each with a total of eighteen years, the latter still in service.
QUALITY OF MEMBERSHIP
Dr. Ezra W. Clark, of Brockton, another veteran legislator, who died in 1928 during his sixteenth year of service (five in the Senate and eleven in the House, not consecutive) said in 1926: "I came here for the first time in 1905, and I am confident that we have a better body of men here today than we had in those days." Congressman Robert Luce, America's
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QUALITY OF MEMBERSHIP
master student of legislative history, procedure and prin- ciples, was a member of the Massachusetts House for nine years. In his book Legislative Assemblies he says "Error in the comparisons of legislative bodies at different periods, comes from contrasting selected groups of members. One im- portant factor is overlooked, one all-important factor-the base-line from which measurements are to be taken. . . . The statesmen of one epoch may so tower above the average of intelligence and ability as to seem demigods. Men of like capacity might at another period hardly rise above the crowd."
Again, he remarks: "Wiseacres shake their heads and say, 'We have no Legislatures now like those in which were Lincoln or Hoar, Henry or Marshall.' Yet in every Legisla- ture to-day are men who ten or twenty years from now will be famous in their turn. The Massachusetts House of Repre- sentatives in 1895 and 1896 was not conspicuously better than at any other period in a generation. The surviving members of those two years held a reunion in 1916. It was found that one of them had become Governor; five had been sent to the Governor's Council, and five to Congress; one had been made a Federal Judge and eleven had become Judges of State courts ; six had been chosen Mayors, four District Attorneys, one Attorney General, and one State Treasurer; forty had served in the State Senate, one as its President; ten had be- come bank presidents; many of the others had achieved re- sponsible positions in professional or business life. The rec- ord was not exceptional. It would be duplicated by the twenty-year story of every Massachusetts Legislature within the memory of man, and by that of the Legislature in many another State."
LATER PUBLIC SERVICE
The following former members of one or the other house of the General Court later became lieutenant governors : John Q. A. Brackett of Arlington (1887-1889) ; Roger Wolcott of Boston (1893-1896) ; John L. Bates of Boston (1900 - 1902); Louis A. Frothingham of Boston (1909-1911) ; Robert Luce of Somerville (1912); David I. Walsh of Fitchburg (1913); Grafton D. Cushing of Boston (1915) ; Calvin Coolidge of Northampton (1916-1918) ; Channing
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GENERAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS
H. Cox of Boston (1919-1920) ; Alvan T. Fuller of Malden (1921-1924) ; Frank G. Allen of Norwood (1925 - 1928) ; William S. Youngman of Boston (1929 - 1931). Of these Brackett, Wolcott, Bates, Walsh, Coolidge, Cox, Ful- ler, and Allen later became governors. Calvin Coolidge of Northampton was President of the Senate (1914-1915) ; Lieutenant Governor (1916-1918) ; Governor (1919-1920) ; Vice President of the United States (1921-1923) ; and Presi- dent of the United States (1923 -1929). Governor McCall served in the Legislature, but not as Lieutenant Governor.
Former members of the Massachusetts legislature who have served in recent years in the Senate of the United States are Henry Cabot Lodge, of Nahant; David I. Walsh, of Fitch- burg; William M. Butler, of New Bedford, and Frederick H. Gillett, of Springfield. A large percentage of the Massachu- setts Representatives in Congress have served in the General Court. William Tyler Page, Clerk of the National House, is convinced that Massachusetts Representatives showed a high degree of efficiency in parliamentary training and legislative experience, and were unusually careful observers of the rules of Congress.
To the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth have gone Senators John Crawford Crosby, of Pittsfield, and Charles Francis Jenney, of Hyde Park. Of the present jus- tices of the Superior Court, Louis Sherburne Cox, of Law- rence, and Frederick Joseph Macleod, of Cambridge, served in the Senate; John Mellen Gibbs, of Waltham, in both Senate and House; and Elias Bullard Bishop, of Newton, William Adams Burns, of Pittsfield, Joseph Walsh, of New Bedford, and Walter Leo Collins, of Boston, in the House.
Many members of both branches have received appointment as heads of State departments, members of State commissions, trustees of State institutions, and judges of lower courts, and to important positions in municipal and mercantile affairs and to posts of honor in the Federal service.
Among those former members who have served promi- nently in other spheres may be mentioned Martin M. Lomas- ney, Charles H. Innes, Augustus P. Loring, John H. Sher- burne, Edward L. Logan, Henry L. Shattuck and Eliot Wadsworth.
25
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The most distinguished member of the General Court dur- ing these forty years was Calvin Coolidge of Northampton- Representative in 1907-1908; Senator, 1912-1915; President of the Senate, 1914-1915; Lieutenant Governor, 1916-1918; Governor, 1919-1920; Vice President of the United States, 1921-1923 ; President, 1923-1929.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BRIDGMAN, ARTHUR M .- Brief Outline Sketches of Massachusetts Legis- lators (Privately printed, 1894-1920).
BRIDGMAN, ARTHUR M .- Our State Capitol (Bridgman, Boston, 1894).
BRIDGMAN, ARTHUR M .- Souvenir of Massachusetts Legislators (Boston, Wright and Potter Printing Company, 1892-1911, 1914-17).
BRIDGMAN, RAYMOND L .- The Folly and Fallacy of Biennials (Privately printed, Boston, 1924)-See particularly chaps. III and v.
BURRILL, ELLEN MUDGE .- The State House, Boston, Mass. (Boston, 1927) -Guide book.
COOK, FREDERIC W .- The Massachusetts Voter, His Rights and Duties of Citizenship in State, County, City, and Town (Boston, Ginn, 1928). EVANS, LAWRENCE BOYD .- Samuel W. McCall, Governor of Massachusetts. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1916).
GEORGE F. HOAR MEMORIAL FUND .- Dedication of the Statute of the Hon. George Frisbie Hoar, Worcester, June 26, 1908. (Worcester, Belisle, 1908).
GREEN, HORACE .- The Life of Calvin Coolidge (N. Y., Duffield, 1924). GRIFFIN, SOLOMON BULKLEY .- W. Murray Crane, A Man and Brother (Boston, Little, Brown, 1926).
GROVES, CHARLES STEWART .- Henry Cabot Lodge, the Statesman (Boston, Small, Maynard, 1925).
HENNESSY, MICHAEL EDMUND .- Calvin Coolidge (N. Y., Putnam's, 1924). HENNESSY, MICHAEL EDMUND .- Twenty-five Years of Massachusetts Poli- tics: 1890-1915 (Boston, Practical Politics, Inc., 1917).
HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE .- Address Delivered before the Senate and House of Representatives and Invited Guests on February 12, 1901, in Re- sponse to an Invitation of the General Court (Boston, 1901).
KIMBALL, JAMES W .- Extracts from the Journals of the House of Repre- sentatives and the Senate Relating to the Clerk of the House from 1897 to 1928 (Boston, 1928)-House Document No. 1254 of 1928.
LAWRENCE, WILLIAM .- Henry Cabot Lodge: a biographical sketch (Bos- ton, Houghton Mifflin, 1925).
LAWRENCE, WILLIAM .- "Roger Wolcott" (HOWE, MARK ANTONY DE WOLFE, Later Years of the Saturday Club, 1870-1920, Boston, Hough- ton Mifflin, 1927)-See pp. 316-321. Also published separately.
LODGE, HENRY CABOT .- Address Delivered before the Senate and House of Representatives on the Life, Character and Public Services of the Honorable George Frisbie Hoar (Boston, 1905).
LODGE, HENRY CABOT .- A Frontier Town, and Other Essays (N. Y., Scribner's, 1906)-See pp. 169-209 for essay on Senator Hoar.
LONG, JOHN DAVIS .- "Reminiscences of my Seventy Years' Education" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. XLII, pp. 348-358, Bos- ton, 1909).
26 GENERAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS
LORD, ARTHUR .- "Memoir of John Davis Long" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. LIII, pp. 10-16, Boston, 1920).
LUCE, ROBERT .- The Science of Legislation (3 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1922-1930)-A volume is devoted to procedure, assemblies, principles respectively.
MASSACHUSETTS (Commonwealth) .- Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Court (Boston, 1839 and later years).
MASSACHUSETTS : GENERAL COURT .- Bulletin of Committee Work and Busi- ness of the Legislature (Boston, .... , and later years)-Issued weekly during each legislative session by the Committees on Rules, with a final complete edition after prorogation.
MASSACHUSETTS: GENERAL COURT .- Manual for the Use of the General Court (Boston, 1856 and later years)-Formerly an annual ; compiled biennially since 1921.
MASSACHUSETTS : GENERAL COURT .- Public Services in Memory of Roger Wolcott, Governor of Massachusetts, 1897-99 (Boston, 1901).
MASSACHUSETTS: GENERAL COURT .- Resolutions in Appreciation of the Distinguished Services of John Davis Long (Boston, 1916).
MASSACHUSETTS : GENERAL COURT: JOINT SPECIAL COMMITTEES .- Special Reports on Methods of Shortening Legislative Sessions and Kindred Matters (Boston, 1893; 1911; 1915)-House Document No. 5 of 1893; House Document No. 2046 of 1911; House Document No. 280 of 1915. MASSACHUSETTS : GENERAL COURT .- Rules (Boston, 1929)-Complete sen- ate, house and joint rules, indexed. House Document No. 1332 of 1929.
MASSACHUSETTS : SPECIAL COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. -A History of the Emblem of the Codfish in the Hall of the House of Representatives (Boston, 1895).
MASSACHUSETTS : GOVERNOR .- Messages to the General Court, Official Ad- dresses, Proclamations, etc., 1914 (Boston, 1918)-The governor's inaugural address is issued annually as Senate Document no. 1.
MASSACHUSETTS : HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES .- Journal (Boston, 1780 and later years).
MASSACHUSETTS: SENATE .- Journal (Boston, 1780 and later years).
MAYO, LAWRENCE SHAW .- Memoir of Samuel Walker McCall (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. LVII, pp. 503-512, Boston, 1924). MCKENZIE, ALEXANDER .- Remarks at the funeral of Hon. William Eustis Russell, July 20, 1896 (Privately printed, 1896).
PLAISTED, JOHN W .- Outline of Legislative Procedure in Massachusetts (Boston, 1925).
POWERS, SAMUEL LELAND .- Portraits of a Half Century (Boston, Little, Brown, 1925)-Includes Governors Long, Russell, Guild and McCall. Practical Politics (Boston, October 1, 1897-April 20, 1918)-No more published.
ROWE, ALFRED SEELYE .- The Old Representatives Hall, 1798-1895; an Ad- dress Delivered before the Massachusetts House of Representatives, January 2, 1895 (Boston, 1895).
RUSSELL, WILLIAM EUSTIS .- Speeches and Addresses of William E. Rus- sell (Boston, Little, Brown, 1894).
Springfield Republican .- The Massachusetts State Library has collected several volumes of clippings giving proceedings of the legislature and reports of hearings before legislative committees, printed during 1903- 1929.
27
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
STOREY, MOORFIELD .- "Tribute to Samuel Walker McCall" (Mass. His- torical Society, Proceedings, Vol. LVII, pp. 186-190, Boston, 1924). THAYER, WILLIAM ROSCOE .- "Curtis Guild" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. L, pp. 308-312, Boston, 1917).
WASHBURN, CHARLES GRENFILL, "Memoir of Henry Cabot Lodge" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. LVIII, pp. 324-376, Boston, 1925).
WASHBURN, ROBERT MORRIS .- Calvin Coolidge, his First Biography (Bos- ton, Small, Maynard, 1923).
Who's Who in State Politics (13 vols., Boston, Practical Politics Company, 1906-1918)-Issued annually.
Who's Who on Beacon Hill (Boston, Practical Politics Company, 1906). WOODS, ROBERT ARCHEY .- The Preparation of Calvin Coolidge (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1924).
CHAPTER II
PROBLEMS OF THE STATE GOVERNMENT (1890-1930)
BY WILLIAM E. DORMAN Counsel for the Senate of Massachusetts
CONSTITUTIONAL REORGANIZATION OF 1918
No structural change in the state government was made after the reorganization of the executive council in 1855 and the establishment of the present system of representa- tion in the General Court in 1857, until nineteen amendments to the constitution were ratified in 1918. But two of these amendments were intended to have any substantial effect on the framework of government,-the forty-eighth, establishing the popular initiative and referendum, and the sixty-sixth, requiring administrative reorganization. The " I & R" delegated to the people powers of legislation never before possessed by them, although the language of the amend- ment purported to "reserve" these powers. It very materially modified the implications of the thirtieth article of the Dec- laration of Rights, recognizing three departments of govern- ment of equal rank. If the people were to become partners in the legislative branch, this fundamental equality would tend to disappear. But the doctrine of Montesquieu, which John Adams wrote into this most frequently cited provision of our fundamental law, had already suffered seriously in our constitutional development. In the half century prior to 1918, Massachusetts had developed a fourth department of govern- ment. An elaborate system of administrative agencies had grown up whereby government had discovered a veritable "fourth dimension." This new administrative branch dis- closed a radical departure from the precepts of Article 30, for it not only had been vested with executive powers, but many of its units were making rules and regulations having the force of enacted law and were sitting quasi-judicially in
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THE FOURTH DEPARTMENT
cases affecting their application to private rights. This three- fold character of the administrative function has been recog- nized by the courts, although the courts themselves religiously restrict their own activities to their traditional sphere.
To the extensive and varied functions of these administra- tive officials have, in the last few years, been added another, -a direct participation in legislation in consequence of their being called upon by the governor to share in the exercise of the executive veto.
THE FOURTH DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT
Massachusetts has led her sister states in the development of this "fourth department." The offices of secretary, treas- urer, attorney-general and adjutant-general were established by statute in the first year under the constitution,-offices that had their origins in colonial and provincial polity. But sixty years later, the state began to lay the foundation of the mod- ern system of administration. In 1837, Massachusetts founded the state board of education, with Horace Mann at its head; in 1838, the bank commissioner ; in 1855, the insur- ance commissioner; in 1863, the board of state charities; in 1869, the railroad commission,-with Charles Francis Adams at its head, and in the same year, the state board of health and the bureau of statistics; in 1879, the harbor and land commission, the commissioners of prisons and the district police; in 1884, the civil service commission; in 1885, the board of cattle commissioners and the board of gas and electric light commissioners; in 1886, the commission on fisheries and game and the board of conciliation and arbitration; in 1889, the metropolitan sewerage commissioners; in 1890, the free public library commissioners and the tax commissioner and commissioner of corporations; in 1892, the commissioner of public records; in 1893, the metropolitan park commission; in 1894, the board of registration in medicine; in 1895, the metropolitan water board; and in 1898, the state board of insanity and the state board of charity, as separate boards. These, with several minor agencies and boards of trustees of various state hospitals and institutions, brought the num- ber of permanent administrative functionaries up to fifty-six in the year 1900.
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STATE GOVERNMENT
MORE RECENT ADMINISTRATIVE AGENCIES (1900-1914)
The period from 1900 to 1914, when the commission on economy and efficiency made its monumental report, were unusually prolific in accretions to state officialdom, for it in- creased the total of administrative agencies by about forty. These years saw the establishment of the office of state for- ester in 1904; the commission for the blind in 1906; the board of bank incorporation in 1906; the commissioner of weights and measures, the board of boiler rules and the trustees of the General Insurance Guaranty Fund in 1907; the art com- mission in 1910; the supervisor of loan agencies, the board of appeal on fire insurance rates, the directors of the port of Boston and the state board of retirement, in 1911; the com- mission on economy and efficiency and the industrial accident board in 1912; the two boards of parole, the minimum wage commission, the homestead commission, the board of labor and industries, and the teachers' retirement board, in 1913; and the fire prevention commissioner of the metropolitan district and the state forest commission, in 1914.
BEGINNINGS IN REORGANIZATION (1879-1918)
Let it not be supposed that the consolidation of these multi- farious functionaries that occurred in 1919 was the first. In 1879, the legislature consolidated the state board of health and the board of state charities, which then had charge of the insane; not until 1898 was their work finally distributed among three boards. In 1901, the metropolitan sewerage commissioners and the metropolitan water board were united as the metropolitan water and sewerage board. In 1916, the directors of the port of Boston and the harbor and land com- missioners were succeeded by the commission on waterways and public lands. In the same year, the prison commissioners and the two parole boards were superseded by the Massachu- setts bureau of prisons. In 1914, the state board of insanity was reorganized and again in 1916, under the name of Massa- chusetts commission on mental diseases; and in 1914 the state board of health, under the name of the state department of health. In 1917, the administrative machinery was further supplemented by the new bureau of immigration and in 1918 by the drainage board.
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REORGANIZATION
THE COMMISSION ON ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY (1910-1914)
Then occurred the reaction. In the early years of the century came the movement for scientific management in business. The idea quickly spread to affairs governmental. In 1910, President Taft's Efficiency and Economy Commis- sion began its work in the Federal Government; and soon the states proceeded to order studies and inquiries looking to increased efficiency and economy in the conduct of public business. Massachusetts was among the first to take action, establishing the Commission on Economy and Efficiency by chapter 719 of the Acts of 1912. Reorganization, consolida- tion and coordination of state departments and institutions, improved methods of administration and classification of em- ployees were among the subjects commended by the legislature to the commission. In 1914, the commission presented to the governor and council its notable report on the functions, organization and administration of the state government. It disclosed the existence of approximately one hundred distinct administrative agencies in the state government. In more than a third of the states, similar bodies were at work and the idea of increased effectiveness through consolidation, cor- relation and coordination of governmental activities was resulting in administrative reorganization.
REORGANIZATION BY POPULAR MANDATE (1917-1919)
It was to be expected that the trend toward administration consolidation would engage the attention of the constitutional convention of 1917. Elsewhere in this work is noted the adoption of the sixty-sixth article of amendment to the con- stitution, requiring that on or before January first, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, the executive and administrative work of the commonwealth should be organized "in not more than twenty departments, in one of which every executive and administrative office, board and commission, except those officers serving directly under the governor or the council, shall be placed. . . "
In response to this mandate, the General Court, in 1919, enacted that the executive and administrative functions of
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STATE GOVERNMENT
the Commonwealth, except such as pertain to the governor and council, and such as are exercised and performed by officers serving directly under the governor and council, should thereafter be performed by the departments of the secretary, treasurer and receiver-general, auditor and attor- ney-general, and by the following sixteen new departments : the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Conser- vation; the Department of Banking and Insurance; the De- partment of Corporations and Taxation; the Department of Education ; the Department of Civil Service and Registration; the Department of Industrial Accidents; the Department of Labor and Industries; the Department of Mental Diseases; the Department of Correction; the Department of Public Welfare; the Department of Public Health; the Department of Public Safety; the Department of Public Works; the De- partment of Public Utilities; the Metropolitan District Com- mission. The act disposed of about ninety administrative units by placing them under the governor and council, or one of the nearly twenty departments.
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