Civil-service reform has very generally made progress during the past twenty years in State and city governments, and probably the principle is now more or less recognized in a great majority of the States.

Comparatively little is to be said as to internal improvements.  The Michigan Constitution provides that the State shall go into no internal improvement whatever, and this, of course, was the older principle without any express constitutional provision.  North Dakota and Wyoming provide that the State cannot be interested in works of internal improvement except upon two-thirds vote of the people.

South Dakota also provides that the State may not engage in them in any case; Alabama, that it may not loan its credit in support of such works; and Maryland, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, that it may not contract debts for the same, or in Kansas be a party to carrying them on.  In Virginia, no county, city, or town may engage in any work of internal improvement except roads.  Many of the States, however, specify a considerable number of purposes for which State, cities, or counties may give or loan their credit; and the matter of municipal socialism has just been discussed.

Very generally, the States have created agricultural experiment stations and model farms, drainage districts in the South, a levee system on the Mississippi River, and irrigation districts in the West; artesian wells in Texas, and in several States, State dairy bureaus.  In specialized products, such as beet sugar, there is often provision for a State agricultural bureau, and nearly always for general agricultural as well as industrial instruction.  The States are only beginning to adopt State forests, or forest reserves, Massachusetts and New York leading the way.  Forestry commissions exist in a few States, but the very slightest beginning has been made at forestry laws.  No control is as yet exercised over reforestation or replanting; a few of the Western States exempt growing trees, or the land covered by growing trees, from more than a nominal tax, notably Indiana and Nebraska.  The forestry laws are, however, increasing.  In 1903 we find one, in 1904 five, and in 1905 six, with the tree bounty law in North Dakota, and two States exempting forest lands from taxes.  There are four statutes this year for fish or game preserves.  In 1907 four States create forestry boards, and two exempt forests from taxation, and in 1908 growing trees are exempted in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.  But under the unlimited power of Congress over Federal territory not yet incorporated into States, or not ceded to the State when incorporated, it is to the Federal government that we have looked for the creation and preservation of parks, forest reserves, and natural reserves generally.  How far it may constitutionally create such within the lines of old States, or on land of which it is otherwise incapable of ownership, is a constitutional question still undecided.