Presidential Possibilities

Governor Ritchie of Maryland differs from most Presidential candidates. He has a platform. Hoover, Dawes, Smith, and Hughes are all running on their records. Lowden is running on the issue of farm relief. Donahey and Pomerene are running as Ohioans. Curtis is running on the advice of his friends. Watson is running for the Indiana delegation. Willis is running for practice or for exercise. But to date none of these gentlemen has defined his attitude toward the Presidency in any great detail.

Albert C. Ritchie was graduated from Johns Hopkins University at twenty, and from the law school of Maryland at twenty-two. Leaving law school in 1898 he practiced with a Baltimore firm. Through city solicitor and people's counsel and State Attorney-General the road led to the Governorship. He was elected first in 1920, and has been reelected twice. He has given the State an economical, business-like administration.

Supports State Rights

With one political principle, independent of his own existence, Ritchie has identified himself. This principle, for which Ritchie is ready to do battle at any season of the year, is the principle of State rights. It is not his hope or his expectation to argue again an issue settled by the Civil War. "The particular application of the doctrine of State rights which culminated in the Civil War bears the label of a lost cause," he believes. No one now challenges the supremacy of the Federal Government or denies the power of Congress "to reach out into the States and influence or control local affairs and enforce uniform standards on subjects about which the people of the various States may differ." But another issue arises at this point. "Before that power is exercised, we face the question, is it wise to use it?"

Raps Bureaucratic Government

Ritchie does not think it wise. "We have drifted too far down the stream of Federal centralization," he believes. Washington has become the home of a bureaucratic system, "remote from the people with burdensome, perplexing laws, lacking popular sanction, red tape and the general incompetence of subordinates performing duties of responsibility." The reason for this is "because progressive men anxious to bring about social betterment have not had the patience to work things out through the slow process of State action, but have sought to attain results through the quicker and broader scope of the Federal Government." Whatever our troubles nowadays--"if crops fail, if prices go too high or too low, if men gamble or violate some of the Commandments, if alcohol is abused, if morals become loose" --we go to Congress for a law. "The result is more and more to transform the American system of government from its age-old purpose of protecting life, liberty, and property into a scheme for social control and the regulation of personal conduct and personal relations."

Before the Civil War, says Ritchie, "the struggle of the States was for State supremacy over Federal power in the Federal domain. Now it is for State existence against Federal transgression in the State domain." There is no longer any danger of State supremacy, but there is a very real danger of State suffocation.

This is Ritchie's issue. And the denouement for which he argues is a less precarious balance between Federal and State power, a strengthening of local governments, a subdivision of so called national problems into manageable units, "so that sectional differences and class conflicts which cannot be settled nationally will be settled locally and will disappear as intraparty discords."

He is opposed to both phases of the enlargement of Federal authority: the process by which the Federal Government bestows friendly gifts upon the States, no less than the process by which it deprives them of powers they once exercised. The growth of the system of Federal subsidies to the States in the matter of good roads, agricultural stations, and vocational education he regards as vicious. However pleasant it may be for the States to receive something for nothing, "the whole tendency of the system is to destroy the principle of local self-government."

Finally, Ritchie's hostility to the growth of Federal power and his loyalty to the theory of decentralization brings him into conflict with prohibition. Here his attitude differs sharply from the attitude expressed by Governor Smith in his last message to the State Legislature of New York. Smith argued that prohibition is a Federal matter; ergo, there is no reason for a State enforcement act. On the other hand, Ritchie argues--consistently with his theory of State rights--that prohibition is a matter with which the Federal Government has not legitimate concern under a truly Federal system, and that "the whole question should be turned back to the States as far as possible."

So runs the political philosophy in which Ritchie is now attempting to persuade his party to put its faith, and his evangelism is unflagging.

It is a theme, ostensibly, which provides a possible basis of reunion for his badly shattered party. For it says to Democrats in all sections of the country: "If you cannot agree about prohibition or about any other contentious issue nationally, agree to disagree about it locally. Make this freedom to disagree, and this willingness to revive a healthy local sovereignty, the basis of your actions and the pillar of your strength. You have Jefferson's word that it is sound governmental policy, and your own experience to tell you it is sound common sense."

So argues Ritchie. Whether he can make a sufficient dent upon his party to propel it in the direction either of Jefferson or of Ritchie, we have yet to see.