Remarks to the Interstate Conference of Legislators.

IT IS A VERY great pleasure to welcome this first Interstate Conference of Legislators to Washington. The subject of your discussions is one of the important problems before the Nation. The depression has naturally made the Nation urgently conscious of the tax burden, but the problem is much older than that. The evolution of governmental functions of municipalities, townships, counties, and States, has led to haphazard development of sources of taxation to support these functions. The result has been a perfect maze of overlapping, conflicting tax systems, with inevitable invasions by one authority of tax areas properly belonging to another authority. If your conference can help to make a scientific division of tax sources amongst the various governmental authorities, you will have made a distinct contribution to the efficiency as well as to the economy of our whole governmental system. I warmly hope that your deliberations may produce fruitful results in this most important field.