current conditions and how they may affect the role of the govern-
ments of our states in the future. In this era of violent social and
economic upheaval, an analysis of all the conditions and the effects
they are likely to produce would be a gigantic task—certainly not
possible in any brief discussion. But I think it is possible to examine,
and perhaps to interpret, some of the more pronounced of the new
conditions under which we live.

Some of the most serious of the problems which confront us today
are from a single cause—the growth and redistribution of the popula-
tion. In my State, seven of every ten persons now are urban dwellers—
that is to say, they live either in the cities or the suburbs. I know that
proportion of urban to rural dwellers does not exist throughout the
South, but the trend toward rapid urbanization is everywhere and the
problems it produces will be with us all for many years of the future.
The contamination of the water we drink, or otherwise use, and of the
air we breathe is a problem of the first magnitude where people live
close together in large urban areas. The slums of our cities, and the
evils they spawn such as poverty, ignorance, disease and crime, have
been called by many persons of knowledge and authority the nation's
number one domestic problem. The problem of moving people and
the goods they consume—the problem of mass transportation and the
construction of streets and highways—is intensified by the growth and
greater concentration of the population. We share, I know, a common
disappointment and feeling of frustration in our failure to solve the
problem of highway safety—a product of the way we live.

One would go on with an almost endless string of new problems, or
old ones aggravated by the changed conditions under which we are
living. Their solution will require the combined efforts of government
at all levels—federal, state and local. It is gratifying, from my point of
view, that the federal government is accepting a heavier responsibility
in some of these areas—notably, in the problems of the cities, in the
elimination of poverty and disease, in water and air pollution, in mass
transportation, in highway safety. But this does not mean a diminua-
tion of State responsibility. On the contrary, our efforts toward the
alleviation of these ills must be intensified and accelerated, and state
governments should lose no time in preparing themselves for the
assumption of heavier obligation.

What can we do to accomplish this?

Well, for one thing I think the entire structure of state government
should be modernized, streamlined, brought up to date. In Maryland,

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