26 weeks; (c) all employment by employers of one or more employees shall be covered; and be it further

Resolved, That the conference respectfully ask the Secretary of Labor to request of the Congress the enactment of such additional Federal standards.

[From the Economic Outlook, CIO, Department of Education and Research, Vol. XIV, No. 8, Aug. 1953] HOW THE MINORITY RULES IN THE STATES

Some years ago the Supreme Court of Kentucky declared:

"Equality is the basis of patriotism. No citizen will or ought to, love the state which oppresses him; and that citizen is arbitrarily oppressed who is denied equality of representation with every other of the Commonwealth."

These words could apply with considerable force to our Federal Government as well, since millions of American citizens, as we have seen, are being deprived of equal representation in the Congress of the United States.1 In the legislatures of the States, however, minority rule is becoming so oppressive and has become so widespread, that it has taken on the nature of a national scandal.

Who are the second class citizens in this underrepresented majority? They are the millions living in our towns and cities, says the United States Conference of Mayors, pointing to the fact that the 59 percent of all Americans who were living in urban centers in 1947 elected only 25 percent of the State legislators.

"59 percent equals 25 percent is bad arithmetic-and bad government. It hurts not just city dwellers, but everybody." 2

Today, 64 percent of all Americans live in urban centers and each year the proportion continues to rise. Yet the representation of city dwellers in most of the States has hardly increased at all.

Take New Jersey, for example, the most heavily urbanized State in the Nation. In the upper House of its State legislature sit 8 senators who represent 8 counties which contain four-fifths of the population. Outvoting them time after time are 13 Senators from 13 rural counties who represent only one-fifth of the population fo New Jersey.

In Connecticut, the city of Hartford with 177,397 people has 2 representatives in the lower House; the town of Colebrook with a population of 592 also has 2.

In agrucultural Iowa, Polk County with 226,010 inhabitants-half of them living in Des Moines-is allowed 1 senator in the upper house. Mahaska County with 24,672 people has 1. (The population of Polk County increased 30,000 between 1940 and 1950; Mahaska lost 2,000. Representation? Still one each.)

In California, Los Angeles County with 40 percent of the population, is entitled to only 22 percent of the State senators.

In Georgia, the 393,000 people who live in Fulton County (Atlanta) had 3 representatives in the lower House in 1947, Echols County (population 3,000 has 1 Let a legislator from Oregon speak for himself:

"I represent 81,000 people. A few desks away sits a senator from a realm of sagebrush and mountains and he represents 7,200 people. This is the total population of his district. Any time there is a rollcall, regardless of the proposal at issue, his vote can cancel mine. The result, of course, is that each resident of this senator's district in the backwoods has 11 times the voice in the State senate of one of my constituents in Portland." 3

Take a rollcall of the 48 State legislatures and you will find minority rule almost everywhere. Study the facts about your own State legislature. Check each representative in the senate and in the house against the number of people he represents. Prepare to be shocked by what you find.

America is predominantly an urban nation-over 95 million people now live in cities and towns-but the minority control over the city-dwelling majority goes far beyond the writing of State laws alone. It touches every level of government-Federal, State and local.

We have already seen how the minority controlled State legislatures influence the composition of the National Government through unrestrained power to set up rotten borough Federal congressional districts within the State. But that is not all. The city majorities are even deprived by the legislatures of local selfrule in their own home towns. Not only are municipal governments controlled

1 See Our Unrepresentative Congress: A National Problem, CIO Economic Outlook, July 1953.

2 See Government of the People, By the People, For the People, a pamphlet issued by the United States Conference of Mayors, 730 Jackson Pl. NW., Washington, D. C.

3 Our Rotten Borough Legislatures by Richard L. Neuberger, The Survey, February 1950.

48088-5417

Guernsey-Montgomery for the Economic Outlook, CIO.

in their own actions, but the very existence of municipal governments must be authorized by the States from which they derive their power.

According to the United States Conference of Mayors, "So detailed is State control of municipal affairs that in a 20-year period, the New York State Legislature made 550 amendments in the charter and passed 1,002 special acts relating to New York City alone."

IN THE BEGINNING, JUST A LITTLE UNDERREPRESENTATION

How, in a great democratic nation, could such a distortion of government "by the people" come about? And why does this injustice continue to this day? The answer can be found in the resistance of people and institutions to the changes which the growth of America into an urbanized industrial giant has long made overdue.

When the Original Thirteen States adopted their State constitutions, the 95 percent of the population who lived on isolated farms and in scattered tiny villages were closely tied to their own townships and counties. In that day, it was not surprising that they wanted each township or county to have one representative in the State legislature. In the majority of States today, this form of area representation, generally by counties, has become established, at least in the makeup of 1 of the 2 houses of the State legislature.

Back in 1790 when only 5 percent of the population lived in cities of over 2,500, urban areas were so few and their populations were so small, this area form of representation involved only a slight inequity to the city dwellers.

Cities did have representation, however, and in the second House they usually had the full number to which their population entitled them. This second house, like the House of Representatives of the Federal Government, was often set up to reflect "people" rather than territories, like townships or counties. Under most State constitutions seats in this second house were to be reapportioned at regular intervals-usually every 10 years so that shifts in population within the State would be taken into account.

As the constitutions of the 48 States were written, a pattern of legislative representation, somewhat like our Federal system, emerged with one house based on area, the other on population. While in some States the system varies substantially from this pattern-and in detail no two State systems are alike—both area and population representation became characteristic of most State legislatures.

TODAY: A MOCKERY OF DEMOCRACY

But America would not stand still. The age of the frontier and the flintlock, and a nation predominantly made up of farmers, passed away. America's millions began to move to the cities and today a majority of us live there. But the system by which State legislatures are elected has virtually remained the same.

Look at what this means:

In State after State "area" representation based on townships or counties has made a mockery of representative government.

Although some States have modified their constitutions and now allow large counties 2, 3, or a few more additional senators (or combine 2 or 3 of the smallest counties into 1 senatorial district), the frustration of equality of representation continues.

Baltimore, with 47 percent of the population of Maryland, has 6 out of 29 representatives in its upper house. In new York and Pennsylvania, city representation in the Senate is limited to a fixed percentage of the total membership, regardless of population growth.

In Montana, Silver Bow County (Butte) with a population of 48,422 has 1 senator; Petroleum County with 1,026 has 1.

In California the 4,125,146 people who live in Los Angeles County elect 1 State senator. The 13,568 people who live in the 3 counties constituting the smallest senatorial district also elect 1.

Some State constitutions even freeze unequal representation into the structures of both Houses of the legislature. Neither is set up to reflect the respective numbers in the population as our Frederal Constitution sets forth for the United States House of Representatives.

For example, Rhode Island allows a maximum of 6 senators from any city and a minimum of representative from any city or town but none to have more than

one-fourth of the total.

No Texas County can have more than 1 senator and not more than 7 representatives, except that 1 additional is allowed for each 100,000 over 700,000. Wyoming allows at least one seat to each county in both Houses, regardless of

size.

Delaware froze its division of representatives and senators among the various sections of the State in its constitution of 1897 and hasn't changed it since.

Vermont and Connecticut base their representatives in the lower house on townships. Representation in the senate is based on the counties.

We could go on recording State after State; in the overwhelming majority one house or both are set up so that political units rather than people are accorded major recognition in the legislatures.

By contrast, the lack of balance in the United States Senate-where New York has 92 times the population of Nevada but each State gets two Senate seatsis almost trivial. In California and Connecticut, for example, the vote of a resident of the smallest legislative district is worth 300 times the vote of a citizen who lives in the largest.

There is no logical justification for this outrageous distortion of the concept of representative government. Why should a sparsely populated county made up mostly of sagebrush or pastureland share equal voting rights with another, containing hundreds of thousands of people?

If representation based on townships and counties had some justification 100 years ago when most of the population was rural and widely dispersed-there can be none today.

Any significance the county may have had in the day of the birchbark canoe or the covered wagon has dwindled in the age of the jet plane and the atom bomb. Besides, our American political system never conferred sovereign powers on the counties, such as were enjoyed by the 13 Original Sovereign States. There is no parallel in history or in function that can justify a status for the county in the structure of State government comparable to the role of the State in the Government of the United States.

THEY STOP COUNTING PEOPLE

But the worst shame of the States is the refusal of the legislatures to reapportion seats according to population changes even when the Constitution requires that they do so.

In most of the States representation in at least one House is supposed to reflect population in some degree as we have seen.

În 42 States the constitutions hold the legislators themselves responsible to reapportion legislative seats generally every 10 years, after the Federal census is conducted. Yet in State after State, as the movement toward the cities has gained momentum, the dominantly rural legislators have refused to act. (See p. 63.)

Perhaps it was too much to entrust this responsibility to them, since the action inevitably would remove many from their jobs. But even the courts have refused to compel compliance with the clear language of the State constitutions. Both State and Federal judges have regularly ruled that they are without power since reapportionment is a political and not a judicial question.

As a consequence, only 19 State legislatures have gotten around to reapportioning one or both Houses since the census of 1940. Connecticut last established its number of State representatives in 1818 and State senators in 1903. Missis