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DELEGATE SCANLAN: lo do.
THE CHAIRMAN: The pages will
please distribute Amendment "S".
This will be Amendment No. 15. Please
modify your amendment by adding after
the word "inclusive" in line 3 the language
"as amended by Amendment No. 14".
The Clerk will read the amendment.
READING CLERK: Amendment No. 15
to Committee Recommendation R&P-2 by
Delegate Seaman:
On page 3 strike out all of section 9
Economic Opportunity comprising lines 22
through 30, inclusive.
THE CHAIRMAN: The amendment is
submitted by Delegate Scanlan. Is there a
second?
Delegate Schneider.
DELEGATE SCHNEIDER: Mr. Chair-
man, I rise to second this motion.
THE CHAIRMAN : The amendment hav-
ing been seconded by Delegate Schneider,
the Chair recognizes Delegate Scanlan to
speak to the amendment.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: Mr. Chairman,
fellow delegates, I persist in what has not
always been a pleasant task, namely, at-
tempting to convince this body that they
should not put in a new modern constitu-
tion mere aspirations, unenforceable ulti-
matums, and other unnecessary language.
It is especially difficult at this time to op-
pose the eloquent plea made by Delegate
Mitchell. She not only stated her case with
eloquence, she supported it with statistics
that demonstrate the truth of her economic
position.
But I think she would be the first to
admit that the problem that she asks the
Convention to wrestle with is a national
problem. It is not peculiarly a Maryland
problem. I submit that if her eloquent
speech had been made on the floors of the
Congress, it would have more meaning,
more relevancy, and would be entirely in
proper order.
It is the national government and only
the national government that ultimately
can win the war against poverty if that
war is to be won. In effect, the language
even as now proposed by the Committee,
as amended by Amendment No. 14, asks
this Convention to write into the constitu-
tion what is either the full employment act
of Maryland or a snare and delusion, and
a statement of pious hope that no action
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on the part of Maryland alone could ever
achieve.
She mentioned the depressed areas of
this State as there are in many other
states. But again, defining those areas, and
the attempt to raise those areas to the
level where they are no longer subject to
such an opprobrious classification as "de-
pressed" is a fight maintained by the fed-
eral government requiring the full sweep
of federal power including the full sweep
of the taxing power. To ask the State of
Maryland singlehandedly to take on this
battle is really to ask the impossible.
Moreover, while I am not unsympathetic
with the economic theory embraced in
Amendment No. 14, it is really a welfare
state concept. I am not sure that any par-
ticular economic theory, whether it be the
economic theory of free enterprise or the
economic theory of the welfare state or
the partial welfare state should be frozen
into the Constitution.
THE CHAIRMAN: You have one-quar-
ter minute, Delegate Scanlan.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: A long time
ago, I need not say which one said this, a
Supreme Court Justice said that he did not
think that Herbert Spencer's social statis-
tics were frozen into the Fourteenth
Amendment and I think the same point
could be made here. This is a national prob-
lem. It can only be solved by national
effort. This proposal that would write some-
thing in the constitution which is unen-
forceable is a snare and delusion.
The other things you have done in the
last few days like permitting the right to
organize collectively and making clear equal
protection of the laws clause prohibits seg-
regation or discrimination on the basis of
race, creed, or color, dealt with substan-
tive rights. Here we have a platitude that
no state action could ever achieve. To put
it in our Constitution is to delude the
people who most need it. I urge strongly
that you delete this section 9.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Kiefer, do
you desire to speak to the amendment?
DELEGATE KIEFER: Mr. Chairman,
ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, we
have put in this Constitution the right of
labor to organize. I do not know why we
could not in this constitution state as the
policy of this State that people in this
State shall have economic security. This
does not guarantee them anything. It does
state a policy. It is not unlike policies that
are stated in other state constitutions
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