The powers bestowed upon those commissions are based upon the assumption that the corporations under their jurisdiction cannot be trusted to take any important decision in respect to their business without official approval.  All such acts must be known to the commission, and be either expressly or tacitly approved, and the official body has the power of ordering their wards to make any changes in their service or rates which in the opinion of the commission are desirable in the public interest.  Thus the commission is required not only to approve all agreements among corporations, all mergers, all issues of securities, but they are in general responsible for the manner in which the corporations are operated.  The grant of such huge powers can be explained only on the ground that the private interest of these corporations is radically opposed to the interest of their patrons.  Public opinion must have decided that if left to themselves, the corporations will behave, on the whole, in a manner inimical to the public welfare; and their business must consequently be actually or tacitly “regulated” in every important detail.

One may well hesitate wholly to condemn this government by commission, because it is the first emphatic recognition in American political and economic organization of a manifest public responsibility.  In the past the public interests involved in the growth of an extensive and highly organized industrial system have been neither recognized nor promoted.  They have not been promoted by the states, partly because the states neither wanted to do so, nor when they had the will, did they have the power.  They have not been promoted by the central government because irresponsibility in relation to national economic interest was, the tariff apart, supposed to be an attribute of the central authority.  Any legislation which seeks to promote this neglected public interest is consequently to be welcomed; but the welcome accorded to these commissions should not be very enthusiastic.  It should not be any more enthusiastic than the welcome accorded by the citizens of a kingdom to the birth of a first child to the reigning monarchs,—­a child who turns out to be a girl, incapable under the law of inheriting the crown.  A female heir is under such circumstances merely the promise of better things; and so these commissions are merely an evidence of good will and the promise of something better.  As initial experiments in the attempt to redeem a neglected responsibility, they may be tolerated; but if they are tolerated for too long, they may well work more harm than good.