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Show -153- int.o by Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania for the purpose of building a canal. A more recent and very successful application of the compact method in this field is found in the New York and New Jersey Tunnel Agreement of 1919. The re- sult of this compact was the construction of the Holland Tunnel with which those who have travelled or lived in the New York vicinity are so familiar. . . With the passage of the Wheeler-Rayburn bill during the last session of Congress,, control over utility problems was centralized in Washington. At the revelation of, facts supplied by powerful lobbies of utility magnates as well as that of zealous government officials, perhaps less open, coupled with the faintly disapproving murmur of a long suffering consumer, it was evident that there was a definite need for regulation of utilities in order to protect users and investors. Until 1935, this problem was left to the states individually. The responsibility is that of the states. Yet they cannot lie dormant when action is needed without, paying.the penalty of federal intervention* Had the states been less lax this problem would probably never have received the attention of Congress• Taxation The first instance on record of taxation being taken into consider- ation in a provision of a state oompaot occurred in 1922 when Kansas and Missouri entered into an agreement providing for the development of joint water works* These states covenanted that the water works should be immune from taxation by either state* National recognition of this problem would have been granted had a bill introduced by Senator Wagner of New York been enaoted. It would have given blanket consent to any two or more states to "enter into agreements or compacts for cooperative effort and mutual assistance in the prevention of duplicating unjust state and local tax and revenue laws and for minimizing the evasion or avoidance of just state and local tax burdens through interstate-transactions." The bill proposed that "The states may establish agencies, joint or otherwise, as they may deem desirable, for negotiating, arranging, revising, and making effective such agreements or compacts •" A bill of this type is worthy of close attention in that its ramifications on becoming a law would be, unlimited. It would apply to all kinds of taxes, including corporation, gasoline, liquor, in- heritance, and income tax levies. Regulation of Labor Since the collapse of the NRA and its codes in consequence of the de- cision of the Supreme Court in the Schechter case, the federal administration has turned to studies in the field of interstate compacts as a means of preserv- ing certain gains made through the codes in relation to labor standards* |