Mr. ABERNETHY. How many would you want?
Mr. CUTLER. I would like to have two.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How many Members of the House of Representatives would you like to have?

Mr. CUTLER. In proportion to the population, the same way that any State has.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Have you proposed or submitted any resolutions that would cover that matter so far as the District is concerned? Mr. CUTLER. No.

Mr. ABERNETHY. You have not?

Mr. CUTLER. We believe what we choose to regard as home rule, a municipal legislature which can be achieved by an act of Congress is the thing on which we should work at the beginning. We would be perfectly happy to see that coupled with a bill calling for a constitutional amendment to give us representation in both Houses.

Mr. ABERNETHY. We do not have jurisdiction over that.

Mr. CUTLER. That is one of the reasons why we think that before your committee we should ask you for home rule alone.

Mr. ABERNETHY. This isn't home rule.

Mr. CUTLER. Let us say a municipal legislature elected by the residents of the District.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Which will be a proxy of Congress?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes; in the chain of command under the Congress. Mr. ABERNETHY. The question of re-ceding this territory of the District back to the State of Maryland has been posed.

I have given some serious thought to that and I think maybe I am going to go along with something similar to that. I haven't picked out the boundaries. I have looked at the map and considered it a lot. You are perfectly willing now for the people of the States, which after all established this Capital here and paid for it, you are willing for them to have some little segment of land that they can call their own for their Capital? You are willing to let them have that now, aren't you?

Mr. CUTLER. I think it is an exact parallel with the State government in any State. It owns land in a State capital.

Mr. ABERNETHY. You are willing for the people in this country, for your folks back in the State of New York, and for my people down South to have a little tract of land somewhere in the country that we can consider as our own and not feel that we are being treated as guests when we get here?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes.

Mr. ABERNETHY. In other words, we will be on our own land and won't be your guests and won't have to come as visitors, as the chairman just said.

Mr. CUTLER. Yes, sir.

Mr. ABERNETHY. How would you feel about receding it, and this is just an approximation, re-ceding all of the land in the District of Columbia beyond New Hampshire Avenue and beyond Florida Avenue and Benning Road and beyond Fifteenth Street SE., and the Anacostia River and the Potomac River?

How would you feel about re-ceding that back to the State of Maryland and let us get down to the real thing and have statehood and home rule and pay taxes to the States, to the counties and the municipalities. How would you feel about that?

97650-52-8

Mr. CUTLER. You moved me into the State of Maryland by one block.

Mr. ABERNETHY. You don't want to go over?

Mr. CUTLER. I am perfectly happy.

Mr. ABERNETHY. I am glad I took you in because you feel so deeply

about this.

Mr. CUTLER. If you do this you are doing something which leaves within your Federal City, I don't know the exact figures, but I imagine we have a hundred thousand people who are living in there.

Mr. ABERNETHY. We are here as visitors, the people who run the Federal Government.

Mr. CUTLER. Do you regard yourself as a visitor when you go to Jackson? Aren't you a guest of Jackson-the people of Jackson— when you go there?

Mr. ABERNETHY. I guess so.

How

Mr. CUTLER. That is the sense in which I meant the statement. Mr. ABERNETHY. I am serious about what I said just now. would you feel about drawing a circle about this seat of government-a seat of government that governs one-hundred-and-fifty-million people, and not just the people of the District of Columbia. How would you feel about receding that to the State of Maryland?

We have a bill to grant statehood to the people of Alaska. You have got enough to make five or six States the size of Alaska so far as population is concerned.

The great State of Maryland is immediately adjacent to the District. I don't know what we would call this other part if we should recede it. How do you feel about it?

Mr. CUTLER. Unless you boil it down to the Federal triangle you are going to have people who live there and have businesses there.

Mr. TEAGUE. I am serious in this idea of the whole thing going back to Maryland and I intend to introduce the same thing in the House. Mr. ÅBERNETHY. I am not willing to cede this land that this Capitol is sitting on to the State of Maryland, New York, Virgina, or any place else.

Mr. TEAGUE. The property in the State of Massachusetts belongs to the State.

Mr. CUTLER. The people who wrote the Constitution agreed with Mr. Abernethy that there should be a district within which the Federal Government could meet and over which the State governments could not exercise any legislative control. I do not have any strong feelings for or against that particular view.

Mr. TEAGUE. That is the reason the District of Columbia was created.

Mr. CUTLER. Yes.

Mr. TEAGUE. If you do have complete home rule, you don't have that. Mr. CUTLER. Yes; you do. The people who created the District along with Mr. Madison said that a municipal legislature elected by their own suffrage would always be allowed them and here after more than 150 years we are still trying to prove that, of course. Mr. HARRIS. Where did Mr. Madison say that?

Mr. CUTLER. It is in the Federalist Papers. Mr. Madison said: A municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them.

That was in the Federalist Papers, No. 43.

Mr. HARRIS. To whom did he make the statement? Mr. CUTLER. Well, it is my understanding and I bow to anyone who is an expert on this phase of American history at that time that the Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution had been drafted by the Constitutional Convention and before it was ratified by all the States for the purpose of convening the State legislatures to ratify the Constitution as drafted, and Mr. Madison and, I believe, Mr. Jefferson, but I am not sure about that, were the writers of the Federalist Papers along with, I believe, one other man.

It fell to Mr. Madison to explain this particular provision.

Mr. HARRIS. Wasn't that statement made when he was endeavoring to get the State of New York to ratify the Constitution and when they were discussing it in Virginia it took a complete, different turn? Mr. CUTLER. This was a published paper under Mr. Madison's pen

name.

Mr. TEAGUE. Do you vote in the State of New York?

Mr. CUTLER. No.

Mr. TEAGUE. Why not?

Mr. CUTLER. Because I regard myself as a resident of the District. Mr. TEAGUE. You could vote for the President and Vice President if you wanted to.

Mr. CUTLER. If I qualified in New York.

Mr. TEAGUE. Yes.

Mr. CUTLER. If I took an oath in New York that I regarded myself as a resident of the State of New York, but I do not think I could truthfully take that oath. I have moved here and practiced law here and hope to remain here as long as I live.

Mr. ABERNETHY. This boundary line that I suggested a moment ago is one I picked out of the air. I have been turning this over in my mind. We might bring it in as close as Massachusetts Avenue and that gets a lot of people from there on up to Florida out of this issue and they become citizens of the State of Maryland. How do you feel about something like that? We might have a little difference as to which blocks should be in there and which blocks should be out, but as far as throwing some sort of circle around the buildings on the Mall and it would be all right with you to let us incorporate the Memorial to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson and the Washington Monument and maybe the White House.

Mr. CUTLER. He is a big taxpayer. We wouldn't like to lose those local taxes.

Mr. ABERNETHY. All right, we will give you the White House. I am serious now. That will give you statehood and you can set up a county and you can have a county government with a sheriff and all of the officers who go along with that. You can keep them going and rolling and pay them and you would have a municipal government and you can elect a city council and in addition to that you can have Congressmen and Senators in Maryland and you can have members of the Maryland Legislature or the Maryland Assembly to vote for. I think I am offering you something that will keep you folks busy voting.

Mr. CUTLER. If you could draw your line in such a way as to include within it the buildings and plants of the Federal Government and leave outside of it the residences.

Mr. ABERNETHY. We would have to include them in there. We have just about run out the people in Virginia with the Pentagon and we have just about run them out of there. They are standing statehood and countyhood, and you have to pay something for that, you know. Would you tonight when you go home and in the quiet of your living room or your bedroom get a map of Washington and draw a line around what you would go along with and mail that to me tomorrow and I will introduce it as a bill to re-cede it to the State of Maryland? What do you say? Will you make me a trade on this?

Mr. CUTLER. I will be glad to draw the lines.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Will you be willing to re-cede to Maryland so that you can have statehood and countyhood and city hood?

Mr. CUTLER. I would prefer that to our present situation.

Mr. ABERNETHY. If you will draw the outline, I will introduce the bill.

Mr. CUTLER. It seems to me that it is an unduly inflexible way to prescribe the boundaries of the Federal Government, and within 10 or 50 or 100 years, you might regret it. Why go to that difficult method of solving a simple problem? Why not do what Mr. Madison said, create a municipal legislature?

Mr. ABERNETHY. I think the people of this country who built this capital, your people and mine, I think they have a right to say this is ours. I do. I honestly feel that way about it. If we took in too much land or not enough land, that is something over which you and I had no control and had nothing to do with. If they took in too much land, then let us get rid of it.

I live up in the northwest. I have a home there and I pay taxes to the District of Columbia. It would take that section in which I live and take it out of the District. Why should it be in the District of Columbia?

Mr. CUTLER. Because people have to live here in order to do their business and to do the business of the Federal Government.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Why should the District of Columbia extend up there?

Mr. CUTLER. I agree with you that this Capital should be ours exclusive of the States, but it seems to me that is consistent with the people in the country saying to the people who live in this area, "You go ahead and run your own police department and your own schools and make your own local laws, and we will be looking at what you do and if you do something we don't like, we will change it."

Mr. ABERNETHY. What is wrong with statehood?

Mr. CUTLER. I think it is not in keeping with the theory of the Constitution.

Mr. ABERNETHY. There is not a single Federal building that I know of from the Mayflower Hotel to the Chevy Chase Circle. Do you know of any?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes, on Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues.
Mr. ABERNATHY. On Connecticut Avenue?

Mr. CUTLER. There is the Bureau of Standards.

Mr. ABERNETHY. We will give you the Bureau of Standards and all that goes with it, so far as I am concerned. We will let you include that in the State of Maryland just as they have done the Pentagon building. That is a part of Virginia.

Mr. CUTLER. Why do you prefer this solution of the problem to Mr. Madison's solution?

Mr. ABERNETHY. Because we are going to get serious, let us take all of the responsibility, not just a part of it.

You made a great, patriotic appeal here for suffrage and the right of autonomy and the right to govern yourselves. All right, let us take it all just the way the people in this country do, statehood and countyhood and cityhood, all those responsibilities and let us not take a part of it and say we want this much but we want the Federal Government to help us pay for it.

Mr. CUTLER. I don't think the people in the District receive any more Federal aid than the people in any other State.

Mr. ABERNETHY. What is the objection to re-ceding it to the State of Maryland?

Mr. CUTLER. I think it would put the Federal Government in a cramped area in which it could not operate.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Now, you will draw that outline for me tonight, will you?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes, I would prefer this solution to the present situation, but I don't see the need for it.

Mr. ABERNETHY. You prefer my solution?

Mr. CUTLER. To the present situation, but I do not say the need for that solution is necessary as compared to the simpler solution of a local legislature.

Mr. ALLEN. I have been concerned during the considerations with the method of election and I have raised the point that the method of taking the plurality votes with no limit on the number of candidates have proven in many cities to be the method of election by which such rings as narcotic rings or gambling rings, liquor rings, can defeat anything like a majority rule.

I am concerned that many people like yourself and many others who come in have not a bit of thought-have not given any thought to the experience of the other cities with regard to the method of election, nor of the results, what the results would be if this method would be applied to the city of Washington. Do you recommend the passage of this bill?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes, I do. I think you have addressed yourself to what we all recognize as a serious problem. I don't know that any city with a method of election has evolved a solution to the problem. I think the method evolved in the Case bill is a good one.

Mr. ALLEN. Has anyone in your organization taken the time to get together the information available from other cities and the results in those cities in the use of those methods of election?

Mr. CUTLER. Yes; during the time of the Auchincloss bill we did a good deal of work on that.

Mr. ALLEN. What did you find as to that?

Mr. CUTLER. As to the method of election?

Mr. ALLEN. What did you find with regard to plurality elections? Mr. CUTLER. Undoubtedly you can find cities which have what is regarded as poor government which use plurality elections, and you can find others with plurality elections that have pretty good governments.

Mr. ALLEN. Do you know of any such?