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Show -2U-- But most questions of interstate concern are beyond the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; they are beyond all court relief. Legislation is the answer, and legislation must be coterminous with the region requiring con- trol. We are dealing vdtii regions* like the Southwest clustering about the Colorado River, or the States dependent upon the Delaware for water, which are organic units in the light of a common human need like water-supply. The regions are less than the nation and are greater than any one State. The mechanism of legislation must therefore be greater than that at the dis- posal of a single State. National action is the ready alternative. But national action is either unavailable or excessive. For a number of inter- state situations Federal control is wholly outside the present ambit of Federal power, wholly unlikely to be conferred upon the Federal government by constitutional amendment and, in the practical tasks of government wholly unsuited to Federal action even if constitutional power were obtained. Vith all our* unifying processes nothing is clearer than that in the United States there are being built up regional interests, regional cultures and regional interdependencies.95 These produce regional problems calling for regional solutions. Control by the nation,, would be ill-conceived and intrusive. A gratuitous burden would thereby be cast upon Congress and the national administration, both of which need to husband their energies for the dis- charge of unequivocally national responsibilities. As to these regional problems Congress could not legislate effectively. Regional interests, regional wisdom and regional pride must be looked to for solutions. The regional economic areas demand continuity of administrative con- trol in so far as control is to be exercised through law. The central prob- lem of law, it is becoming clearer every day, is enforcement. Experience overwhelmingly demonstrates that the demands of law upon economic enterprises, like the modern utilities, cannot be realized through the occasional ex- plosions of lawsuits but call for the continuity of study, the slow build- ing up of knowledge, the stimulation of experiments, the initiative in en- forcement which can only be secured through a permanent, professional ad- ministrative agency. The inventive powers exacted from modern State legis- latures must grapple with problems whose stage is an interstate region. Col- lective legislative action through the instrumentality of compact by States constituting a region furnishes the answer. Perhaps the sharpest emergence of this problem is due to the widespread development of electric power. Engineering advances, a diminishing coal supply^ the growing burden of transportation costs, the resulting stimula- tion of* new forms of cheaper power, in its turn promoting industry, the pressure of war in accelerating the movement, have, all combined to make the "electrical age" an apt characterization of our times. The primitive begin- nings of this era lie less than forty years behind us. But probably no other material influence has had anything like such penetrating economic "^Turner, Sections and Nation (1922) 12 Yale Rev. (N. S.) 1 |