the decade of the 1950's may be described as almost fantastic, and I
believe the decade we are in could make what has gone before seem
insignificant by comparison. With its 30-per-cent increase at the last
census, Maryland, well established before the Republic was founded,
joins ranks, in terms of population increase, with the growing states
of the West, still under the influence of Westward Expansion.

Interrelated to this is the phenomenon of urbanization. Approxi-
mately 70 per cent of our people live in the Baltimore and Wash-
ington metropolitan areas.

I will not attempt to define all the results these conditions will
produce, but some of the effects are clearly evident. We must reckon,
for example, with sheer numbers in most of the things we do in the
years ahead. We must think in terms of a school and college popu-
lation doubled in ten years and tripled in twenty. We must make
preparations for the accommodation by 1970 of a total population of
nearly 4, 0000, 000 a motor vehicle registration of 1, 600, 000, a com-
munity of more than a quarter of a million people 65 years of age
or older.

The fact of urbanization always must be uppermost in the minds
of those who plan for the State's future. Urbanization makes the
conservation of remaining natural resources and open land an in-
escapable necessity. The relationship of State and local governments,
and of local governments with one another, already affected by it,
will become more complicated in this floodtide of urbanization.

I am describing to you some of the great challenges of our era.
The rewards to our State will be plentiful if we meet them. I predict
that they will be met successfully.

Some of the problems I have listed here may be described as of
intermediate or long range. I doubt if there is one among my listeners
who needs to be prompted to the fact that there are immediate prob-
lems facing us at this session. Some of you, I have observed, already
have compiled your lists, arranging them in the order of their impor-
tance and getting them published. I congratulate you. As we move
along in this discourse, I will disclose to you some of my own think-
ing about the issues before us at this session.

As we meet here each year, our primary concern—the principal
issue—is, as you all know, the adoption of a program to finance the
various activities of State Government—in other words, the adoption
of the annual budget. In the budget message which I shall deliver to
you within the next few weeks, the fiscal program will be dealt with

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