licy is the most advantageous. It would be manifestly unwise,
for instance, to place our postal facilities under the direction of a
corporation, even though its operations were regulated by government.
It would be even more unwise to place the operations of the flouring
mills of the country in the hands of a department of the government. The
important factors to be considered in deciding any given case are,
first, the importance and necessity to the public of the service, and,
second, the question whether production in the given case is likely to
be carried on more economically by the government or by private
enterprise. The former has an advantage in that it can secure its
capital at a lower rate of interest. The latter, an advantage in that it
secures greater efficiency from the labor it employs. Other
circumstances being equal, it would appear wisest, then, for government
to take direct charge of those monopolies in which the greatest amount
of capital is invested and the least labor is employed, leaving to
private enterprise under government regulation the operation of
monopolies in which the opposite set of conditions prevails.

As already stated, however, the question is complicated by the social
and industrial effects which might follow a large transfer of enterprise
from private to governmental direction; and these effects we will not
now discuss.

XV.

THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE AND OF THEIR REPRESENTATIVE, THE
GOVERNMENT.

We have now at last deduced the important facts, that the only remedy
for the evils of monopoly must come from the popular will, expressed in
direct action by the government; that the government may possibly keep
competition alive by checking its intensity, or can certainly allow
events to take their natural course and permit monopolies to be
established. It can then protect the public, either by assuming itself
the ownership and operation of the monopoly, or by taking the less
radical step of placing the monopoly under official supervision and
control while permitting its private ownership to continue. This
conclusion is of the utmost importance, for it marks out one single
direction as the one in which relief from the evils which vex us may be
found. If we can once make the thinking people of the country understand
the effect which monopolies have upon their welfare, and that the evil
will not cure itself and cannot be cured by attempts to create
competition or by any