ons connected with their treatment of their employees,
including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like. Not only is the
proper treatment of a corporation, from the standpoint of the managers,
shareholders, and employees, compatible with securing from that
corporation the best standard of public service, but when the effort
is wisely made it results in benefit both to the corporation and to the
public. The success of Wisconsin in dealing with the corporations within
her borders, so as both to do them justice and to exact justice in
return from them toward the public, has been signal; and this Nation
should adopt a progressive policy in substance akin to the progressive
policy not merely formulated in theory but reduced to actual practice
with such striking success in Wisconsin.

To sum up, then. It is practically impossible, and, if possible,
it would be mischievous and undesirable, to try to break up all
combinations merely because they are large and successful, and to put
the business of the country back into the middle of the eighteenth
century conditions of intense and unregulated competition between
small and weak business concerns. Such an effort represents not
progressiveness but an unintelligent though doubtless entirely
well-meaning toryism. Moreover, the effort to administer a law merely
by lawsuits and court decisions is bound to end in signal failure, and
meanwhile to be attended with delays and uncertainties, and to put a
premium upon legal sharp practice. Such an effort does not adequately
punish the guilty, and yet works great harm to the innocent. Moreover,
it entirely fails to give the publicity which is one of the best
by-products of the system of control by administrative officials;
publicity, which is not only good in itself, but furnishes the data
for whatever further action may be necessary. We need to formulate
immediately and definitely a policy which, in dealing with big
corporations that behave themselves and which contain no menace save
what is necessarily potential in any corporation which is of great size
and very well managed, shall aim not at their destruction but at their
regulation and supervision, so that the Government shall control them
in such fashion as amply to safeguard the interests of the whole public,
including producers, consumers, and wage-workers. This control should,
if necessary, be pushed in extreme cases to the point of exercising
control over monopoly prices, as ra