the General Assembly when it adjourned a few weeks ago. Like many
other citizens, I had my disappointments, too, but I believe that by
any fair appraisal, the 1965 session must be considered a constructive
and an effective one. I should like to tell you why I think so.

By the sheer quantity of its workload alone, this year's regular ses-
sion of our Legislature was an impressive one. By any measurement,
it must be considered the busiest session on record. It handled nearly
1, 900 bills —an all-time record —with committee hearings and time-
consuming floor debates on many of them. Limited to 70 days, under
a new constitutional provision, it jammed into that time more work
than was done in most of the past 90-day sessions. Of course our judg-
ment of a legislative performance should be based not so much on
quantity as on quality, but with quality as the standard I believe the
1965 session must be adjudged a constructive one.

Just briefly — and with no hope of being comprehensive — I should
like to review some of the legislation that was adopted which leads
me to that conclusion. This includes bills to expand the State's efforts
in public education, in health and mental hygiene, in welfare services.
It includes a measure to redefine the boundaries of our Congressional
districts to provide a fairer representation in the Congress of the
United States. There are numerous bills to improve the regulation
of motor vehicles and highway safety, to solve problems in the in-
surance field and to broaden the State's activity in many other fields
which affect the daily lives of the citizens of our State.

It is true that our plan for Congressional redistricting has not met
with universal approval, but I can assert, without fear of successful
contradiction, that a plan wholly satisfactory to everyone would be
impossible to devise. I maintain, further, that it is a good plan —
certainly as good as we have reason to expect under the circumstances.
It is true, also, that the Legislature failed to adopt an equitable reap-
portionment of the Senate and the House of Delegates which I had
requested in the message that I delivered at the opening of the session.
But I have asked the Legislative Council to work on reapportionment
legislation during the coming summer months, and it is my hope that
in a special session that a law can be passed that will meet the Supreme
Court's mandate to apportion legislative seats in a manner to con-
form with the court's "one man, one vote" principle.

It is in the less spectacular, less sensational areas of endeavor that
I think the General Assembly achieved its greatest success. I have in
mind in particular the advances that were made in such vital State

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