he interested motive for
increased efficiency at a certain point, but such a point could hardly
be reached except in the case of companies whose monopoly was almost
complete.

The foregoing plan, however, is not suggested as a final and entirely
satisfactory method of incorporating semi-monopolistic business
organizations into the economic system of a nationalizing democracy. I
do not believe that any formula can be framed which will by the magic of
some chemical process convert a purely selfish economic motive into an
unqualified public economic benefit. But some such plan as that proposed
above may enable an industrial democracy to get over the period of
transition between the partial and the complete adaptation of these
companies to their place in a system of national economy. They can never
be completely incorporated so long as the interest of their owners is
different from that of the community as a whole, but in the meantime
they can be encouraged to grow and perhaps to become more efficient,
while at the same time they can be prevented from becoming a source of
undesirable or dangerous individual economic inequalities; and I do not
believe that such a transitional system of automatically regulated
recognition would be open to the same objections as would a system of
incessant official interference. In so far, indeed, as the constructive
industrial leader is actuated merely by the motive of amassing more
millions than can be of any possible use to himself or his children--in
so far as such is the case, the inducement to American industrial
organization on a national scale would be impaired. But if an economic
democracy can purchase efficient industrial organization on a huge scale
only at the price of this class of fortunes, then it must be content
with a lower order of efficiency, and American economic statesmanship
has every reason to reject such an alternative until there is no help
for it. The best type of American millionaire seems always to have had
as much interest in the work and in the game as in its prodigious
rewards; and much of his work has always been done for him by employees
who, while they were paid liberally, did not need the inducement of more
money than they could wholesomely spend in return, for service of the
highest efficiency.

In any event the plan of an automatically regulated recognition of
semi-monopolistic corporations would be intended only as a transitional
measure. Its object woul