ted; but if they
are tolerated for too long, they may well work more harm than good.

The constructive idea behind a policy of the recognition of
semi-monopolistic corporations, is, of course, the idea that they can be
converted into economic agents which will make unequivocally for the
national economic interest; and it is natural that in the beginning
legislators should propose to accomplish this result by rigid and
comprehensive official supervision. But such supervision, while it would
eradicate many actual and possible abuses, would be just as likely to
damage the efficiency which has been no less characteristic of these
corporate operations. The only reason for recognizing the large
corporations as desirable economic institutions is just their supposed
economic efficiency; and if the means taken to regulate them impair that
efficiency, the government is merely adopting in a roundabout way a
policy of destruction. Now, hitherto, their efficiency has been partly
the product of the unusual freedom they have enjoyed. Unquestionably
they cannot continue to enjoy any similar freedom hereafter; but in
restricting it care should be taken not to destroy with the freedom the
essential condition of the efficiency. The essential condition of
efficiency is always concentration of responsibility; and the decisive
objection to government by commission as any sufficient solution of the
corporation problem is the implied substitution of a system of divided
for a system of concentrated responsibility.

This objection will seem fanciful and far-fetched to the enthusiastic
advocates of reform by commission. They like to believe that under a
system of administrative regulation abuses can be extirpated without any
diminution of the advantages hitherto enjoyed under private management;
but if such proves to be the case, American regulative commissions will
establish a wholly new record of official good management. Such
commissions, responsible as they are to an insistent and uninformed
public opinion, and possessed as they inevitably become of the peculiar
official point of view, inevitably drift or are driven to incessant,
vexatious, and finally harmful interference. The efficient conduct of
any complicated business, be it manufacturing, transportation, or
political, always involves the constant sacrifice of an occasional or a
local interest for the benefit of the economic operation of the whole
organization. But it is just such sacri