n to which the national banks are
obliged to submit. In this case the bank examiners and the Controller do
not interfere in the management of the bank, except when the management
is violating certain conditions of safe banking--which have been
carefully defined in the statute. So long as the banks obey the law,
they need have no fear of the Treasury Department. But in commission
government the official authority, in a sense, both makes and
administers the law. The commission is empowered to use its own
discretion about many matters, such as rates, service, equipment, and
the like, in relation to which the law places the corporation absolutely
in its hands. Such official interference is of a kind which can hardly
fail in the long run to go wrong. It is based on a false principle, and
interferes with individual liberty, not necessarily in an unjustifiable
way, but in a way that can hardly be liberating in spirit or
constructive in result.

The need for regulation should not be made the excuse for bestowing upon
officials a responsibility which they cannot in the long run properly
redeem. In so far as the functions of such commissions are really
regulative, like the functions of the bank examiners, they may for the
present perform a useful public service. These commissions should be
constituted partly as bureaus of information and publicity, and partly
as an administrative agency to secure the effective enforcement of the
law. In case the Sherman Anti-Trust Law were repealed, the law
substituted therefor should define the kind of combination among
corporations and the kind of agreements among railroads which were
permissible, and the commission should be empowered to apply the law to
any particular consolidation or contract. Similar provision should be
made in respect to railroad mergers, and the purchases by one railroad
of the stock of another. The purposes for which new securities might be
legitimately issued should also be defined in the statute, and the
commission allowed merely to enforce the definitions. Common carriers
should be obliged, as at present, to place on record their schedules of
rates, and when a special or a new rate was made, notification should be
required to the commission, together with a statement of reasons.
Finally the commission should have the completest possible power of
investigating any aspect of railway and corporation management or
finance the knowledge of which might be useful to Congress