Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/249

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THE LEGISLATURE
225

that we should secure all possible knowledge relating to that statute for the use of our legislators. In this way legislation cannot avoid being improved; in this way the dearly bought experience of one state is used for the betterment of conditions in another state; the best there is may be culled out from the statutes throughout the country and used for the benefit of our people.

There is a great outcry against our overloaded constitutions. Our constitutions have been purposely overloaded because the people who made them wished to incorporate certain things which could not be overturned by the caprice or corruption of legislators. As time goes on, if the people find that the product of legislation is based upon a careful scientific study, they will regain confidence in the legislature and again trust it.

There is a widespread agitation at the present time for centralization and nationalization, a movement which strives to have one after another of the state functions absorbed by the national government. There is much discussion concerning various forms of federal supervision of one thing or another. As our state laws are gradually improved, a great deal of this agitation will cease, for as yet we have not reached the limit of efficient state activity, nor made a scientific study or expedients. The best laws are those which are of most interest to the men who make the laws, and the only means of saving our local option system of state government, the only