Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/239

 permit. It was found that there was no coöperation between the different states of this Union in the matter of collecting the history of legislation; the history of what had occurred in Europe or in some state of the Union upon a certain subject of interest to the people of the state was not readily available. An effort to supply this demand was made by collecting such indexes of up-to-date legislation as were published, bills from other states, documents explanatory of legislative movements in other states and arranging these by subjects so that they would be at the service of all who desired to see them. It was found that even this material did not solve the problem; it was necessary to clip newspapers from all over the country and to put the clippings in book form, to index them carefully and place them also with the subjects. Our own bills of the previous four sessions were carefully indexed and by noting the subjects of those bills, we anticipated the problems with which the legislature would have to deal. These problems or special subjects were carefully studied in the most minute detail. It was comparatively easy to get laws and court cases but it was far more difficult to find how these laws were administered, to discover the weaknesses in them and to note as far as possible how they could be adapted to our use in this state.

Our short experience has taught us many things. We have been convinced that there is a great opportunity