12 State Papers and Addresses

of the shortsighted action of the nations of the world in erecting unscalable
walls around their tborders to keep out their neighbor's goods, there is wide-
spread suspicion that our country can no longer lay claim to the traditional
designation as the "world's greatest free trade area. "

Under the guise of the protection of public health, the encouragement of
new industrial development and, sometimes, openly as Simon-pure protection
of home industry, as well as inert failure to make uniform the transportation
regulations of adjoining states, we of the States have been accused of rapidly
Balkanizing this formerly great free trade area. It is even conceivable that,
if our States continue to pursue their present course of action, we may begin
to develop interstate antagonisms not basically different from international
rivalries rampant today.

Some of the States have barred, by excessive taxation, products of the
deep South, and southern States have, in turn, complemented this action by
placing prohibitive levies on products produced almost solely without their
borders. Some of us, by location, have found that we command the gates of
highway travel. The need for revenue has pressed on all of us in recent years,
and if we find ourselves in a fortunate geographical position the temptation
to extract the last drop of revenue from all transportation agencies has been
too great sometimes for us to resist.

Our main speaker this afternoon is the Governor of the State which stands
at the crossroads of the country. I doubt that he would claim pristine purity
for the actions of his State in all forms of discriminatory legislation, but I
know that his State stands in a particularly vulnerable position by reason of
its geographic location to suffer from this internecine warfare of ours which
threatens unpredictable harm in the unity of our Nation if steps are not taken
to curb it.

We, at. the Fourth General Assembly, and representing all of the States,
should give earnest consideration to the best possible means of carrying for-
ward within our own Country this work of tearing down barriers to trade and
preserving and expending that great free market which the Constitution of
the United States intended to safeguard to all our posterity.

COUNTY PRESS MEETING

January 21, 1939

Annapolis

r gives me a great deal of pleasure to be called upon, among the very first
acts of my term as Governor, to welcome to Annapolis you gentlemen who
represent the press of the twenty-three counties of Maryland as well as from
other States. As a former member of your profession, and as a public official
who realizes fully the great part that the press can, and does, play in the
enlightenment of the electorate, and in the preservation of those fundamental
liberties and privileges that set the American people apart today from most of
the other peoples of the world, I bid you a heart-felt welcome, and trust that
I may see much of you gentlemen, individually and collectively, during my
stay here in Annapolis.