e assumption
that the corporations under their jurisdiction cannot be trusted to take
any important decision in respect to their business without official
approval. All such acts must be known to the commission, and be either
expressly or tacitly approved, and the official body has the power of
ordering their wards to make any changes in their service or rates which
in the opinion of the commission are desirable in the public interest.
Thus the commission is required not only to approve all agreements among
corporations, all mergers, all issues of securities, but they are in
general responsible for the manner in which the corporations are
operated. The grant of such huge powers can be explained only on the
ground that the private interest of these corporations is radically
opposed to the interest of their patrons. Public opinion must have
decided that if left to themselves, the corporations will behave, on the
whole, in a manner inimical to the public welfare; and their business
must consequently be actually or tacitly "regulated" in every important
detail.

One may well hesitate wholly to condemn this government by commission,
because it is the first emphatic recognition in American political and
economic organization of a manifest public responsibility. In the past
the public interests involved in the growth of an extensive and highly
organized industrial system have been neither recognized nor promoted.
They have not been promoted by the states, partly because the states
neither wanted to do so, nor when they had the will, did they have the
power. They have not been promoted by the central government because
irresponsibility in relation to national economic interest was, the
tariff apart, supposed to be an attribute of the central authority. Any
legislation which seeks to promote this neglected public interest is
consequently to be welcomed; but the welcome accorded to these
commissions should not be very enthusiastic. It should not be any more
enthusiastic than the welcome accorded by the citizens of a kingdom to
the birth of a first child to the reigning monarchs,--a child who turns
out to be a girl, incapable under the law of inheriting the crown. A
female heir is under such circumstances merely the promise of better
things; and so these commissions are merely an evidence of good will and
the promise of something better. As initial experiments in the attempt
to redeem a neglected responsibility, they may be tolera