permanent, physical plant, and some special use of public highways.
Thus gas pipes, water pipes, poles and wires for telegraph, telephones
and electric light, street railways, regular steam railroads and some
other minor industries all answer to this test.[16]

Beginning about the year 1900 one state after another enlarged the
powers of its state railroad commission or created a new corporation
commission to regulate these "local" or "public utilities."[17] They
have accomplished much, but the development of this kind of regulation
has not proceeded in many cases beyond the adjustment of relative
rates and the abolition of discrimination among the different
individuals and classes of customers. Experience has shown the great
difficulty of determining what is a fair absolute level of charges.
A new science of accounting has been developing to assist in the
solution of a problem, the complexity of which transcends the agencies
at hand to deal with it. With this policy applied to the local utility
(and railroad) phase of monopoly, there remains still the problem of
the industrial trusts in the manufacturing enterprises.

Sec. 13. #The industrial trust,--a natural evolution?# The policy that
one is inclined to favor regarding industrial trusts depends very
much on one's answer to the question: Are or are not industrial trusts
natural growths? In this bare form the question is somewhat vague, but
the thought of those who answer it in the affirmative is positive if
not always entirely clear. They (at least the extreme representatives
of this view) declare that trusts have been, are, and will continue
to be, the results of a "natural evolution" of business conditions, as
inevitable as the great changes in the physical world. If this is so
man and society must recognize the facts, must waste no efforts vainly
in fighting against fate, but should accept the trusts and realize
their possibilities for good. And these are declared to be great, for
it is assumed that without the trusts all of the economies of large
production must be sacrificed. Irresistible economic forces, it is
said, are creating larger and larger units of business; friendly
cooeperation and unified action must take the place of competition in
business.

The outcome must be monopoly in every important line of manufacturing
industry and perhaps of commerce. In view of public opinion toward
monopoly, its acceptance necessitates its regulation. This argument
is