on may come to exist in respect to those corporations
which should be subject to the jurisdiction of the central government;
and just in so far as it does come to exist, the policy of the central
government should resemble the one suggested for the municipal
governments and already occasionally adopted by them. That any
corporations properly subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal
government will attain to the condition of being a "natural" monopoly
may be disputed; but according to the present outlook, if such is not
the case, the only reason will be that the government by means of
official and officious interference "regulates" them into inefficiency,
and consequent inability to hold their own against smaller and less
"regulated" competitors. If these corporations are left in the enjoyment
of the natural advantages which wisely or unwisely they have been
allowed to appropriate, some of them at any rate will gradually attain
to the economic standing of "natural" monopolies.

The railroad system of the country is gradually approximating to such a
condition. The process of combination which has been characteristic of
American railroad development from the start has been checked recently
both by government action and by anti-railroad agitation; but if the
railroads were exempted from the provisions of the Anti-Trust Law and
were permitted, subject to official approval, either to make agreements
or to merge, according as they were competing or non-competing lines,
there can be no doubt that the whole country would be gradually divided
up among certain large and essentially non-competitive systems. A
measure of competition would always remain, even if one corporation
controlled the entire railway system, because the varying and
conflicting demands of different localities and businesses for changes
in rates would act as a competitive force; and in the probable system
of a division of territory, this competitive force would have still more
influence. But at the same time by far the larger part of the freight
and passenger traffic of the country would under such a system be shared
by arrangement among the several corporations. The ultimate share of
each of the big corporations would not be determined until the period of
building new through routes had passed. But this period is not likely to
endure for more than another generation. Thereafter additional railroad
construction will be almost exclusively a matter of branch exte