cessity to take chances, to run the risk of
falling under the condemnation of the law before it can make sure just
what the law is. Surely we are sufficiently familiar with the actual
processes and methods of monopoly and of the many hurtful restraints of
trade to make definition possible, at any rate up to the limits of what
experience has disclosed. These practices, being now abundantly
disclosed, can be explicitly and item by item forbidden by statute in
such terms as will practically eliminate uncertainty, the law itself and
the penalty being made equally plain.

And the business men of the country desire something more than that the
menace of legal process in these matters be made explicit and
intelligible. They desire the advice, the definite guidance and
information which can be supplied by an administrative body, an
interstate trade commission.

The opinion of the country would instantly approve of such a commission.
It would not wish to see it empowered to make terms with monopoly or in
any sort to assume control of business, as if the Government made itself
responsible. It demands such a commission only as an indispensable
instrument of information and publicity, as a clearing house for the
facts by which both the public mind and the managers of great business
undertakings should be guided, and as an instrumentality for doing
justice to business where the processes of the courts or the natural
forces of correction outside the courts are inadequate to adjust the
remedy to the wrong in a way that will meet all the equities and
circumstances of the case.

Producing industries, for example, which have passed the point up to
which combination may be consistent with the public interest and the
freedom of trade, cannot always be dissected into their component units
as readily as railroad companies or similar organizations can be. Their
dissolution by ordinary legal process may oftentimes involve financial
consequences likely to overwhelm the security market and bring upon it
breakdown and confusion. There ought to be an administrative commission
capable of directing and shaping such corrective processes, not only in
aid of the courts but also by independent suggestion, if necessary.

Inasmuch as our object and the spirit of our action in these matters is
to meet business half-way in its processes of self-correction and
disturb its legitimate course as little as possible, we ought to see to
it, and the judgment of