h such a policy
can best be carried out. Certain essential aspects of this question will
not be discussed in the present connection. The thorough carrying out of
a policy of recognition would demand a Federal incorporation act, under
which all corporations engaged in anything but an exclusively local
business would be obliged to organize; but, as we have already seen,
such an act would be unconstitutional as applied to many technically
domestic corporations, and it would probably be altogether
unconstitutional, except, perhaps, under limitations which would make it
valueless. It may be that some means will be found to evade these
Constitutional difficulties, or it may not be. These are matters on
which none but the best of Constitutional lawyers have any right to an
opinion. But in any event, I shall assume that the Federal government
can eventually find the legal means to make its policy of recognition
effective and to give the "trust" a definite legal standing. What sort
of regulation should supplement such emphatic recognition?

The purpose of such supervision is, of course, to prevent those abuses
which have in the past given the larger corporation an illegal or an
"unfair" advantage over its competitors; and the engine which American
legislatures, both Federal and state, are using for the purpose is the
commission. The attempt to define in a comprehensive statute just what
corporations may do, or must in the public interest be forbidden from
doing, is not being tried, because of the apparent impossibility of
providing in advance against every possible perversion of the public
interest in the interest of the private corporation. The responsibility
of the legislature for the protection of the public interest is
consequently delegated to a commission whose duties are partly
administrative and partly either legislative or judicial. The most
complete existing type of such a delegated power is not the Federal
Inter-state Commerce Commission, but the Public Service Commissions of
New York State; and in considering the meaning and probable effects of
this kind of supervision I shall consider only the completed type. A
Federal Inter-state Commerce Commission which was fully competent to
supervise all inter-state commerce and all commerce competing therewith
would necessarily possess powers analogous to those bestowed upon the
New York Public Service Commissions.

The powers bestowed upon those commissions are based upon th