of the honest investor are entitled to
the same protection as the interests of the honest manager, the honest
shipper and the honest wage-earner. All these conflicting considerations
should be carefully considered by Legislatures before passing laws. One
of the great objects in creating commissions should be the provision of
disinterested, fair-minded experts who will really and wisely consider
all these matters, and will shape their actions accordingly. This is one
reason why such matters as the regulation of rates, the provision for
full crews on roads and the like should be left for treatment by railway
commissions, and not be settled off hand by direct legislative action.

APPENDIX

SOCIALISM

As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning Socialism, I
wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism versus
Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. Simkhovitch.
What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and
ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me,
Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical
insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied
philosophy. Crude thinkers in the United States, and moreover honest and
intelligent men who are not crude thinkers, but who are oppressed by
the sight of the misery around them and have not deeply studied what has
been done elsewhere, are very apt to adopt as their own the theories
of European Marxian Socialists of half a century ago, ignorant that the
course of events has so completely falsified the prophecies contained
in these theories that they have been abandoned even by the authors
themselves. With quiet humor Professor Simkhovitch now and then makes
an allusion which shows that he appreciates to perfection this rather
curious quality of some of our fellow countrymen; as for example when
he says that "A Socialist State with the farmer outside of it is a
conception that can rest comfortably only in the head of an American
Socialist," or as when he speaks of Marx and Engels as men "to whom
thinking was not an irrelevant foreign tradition." Too many thoroughly
well-meaning men and women in the America of to-day glibly repeat and
accept--much as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized
dogma in their day--various assumptions and speculations by Marx and
others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been
shown to pos