There is another aspect of the matter, however.  The burden of federal bureaucracy is beginning to be felt by the average man.  He is being regulated more and more, in his meats and drinks, his morals and the activities of his daily life, from Washington.  If he will only stop and think he must realize that no one central authority can supervise the daily lives of a hundred million people, scattered over half a continent, without becoming top-heavy.  He must realize, too, that, even if such a centralization of power and responsibility were humanly possible, our National Government is unsuited for the task.  The electorate is too numerous and heterogeneous; its interests and needs are too diverse.  Shall the conduct of citizens of Mississippi be prescribed by vote of congressmen from New York, or supervised at the expense of New York taxpayers?  Will an educational system suitable for Massachusetts necessarily fit the young of Georgia?  Such suggestions carry their own answer.  In the very nature of things there is bound to be a reaction against centralization sooner or later.  The real question is whether it will come in time to save the present constitutional scheme.

The makers of the Constitution never intended that the people of one state should regulate, or pay for supervising, the conduct of citizens of another state.  They made a division of governmental powers between nation and states along broad and obvious lines.  To the Federal Government were entrusted matters of a strictly national character—­foreign relations, interstate commerce, fiscal and monetary system, post office, patents and copyrights.  Everything else was reserved, to the states or the people.  Here was a scheme at once explicit and elastic.  Explicit as to the nature of the functions to be performed by the National Government; elastic enough to permit the exercise of all other powers reasonably incidental to the powers expressly granted.  The Constitution is not, and never was intended to be, a strait-jacket.

Proofs abound of the adequacy of the constitutional scheme to deal with changing conditions.  For example, when the Constitution was adopted, railroads, the most powerful economic force in our present civilization, were unknown.  Nevertheless, the Constitution contains adequate provision for dealing with the railroads.  They are instruments of interstate commerce and may be controlled by the Federal Government under the express grant of power to regulate such commerce.  Similar considerations apply in the case of those nationwide industrial combinations popularly known as “trusts.”  Their activities are largely in the field of interstate commerce and are subject to control as such by the Federal Government.  Theoretically, only such activities of the railroads and trusts as are of an interstate character fall within the federal jurisdiction.  Everything else lies within the jurisdiction of the states.  However, a practical people will not long permit matters which