The need for regulation should not be made the excuse for bestowing upon officials a responsibility which they cannot in the long run properly redeem.  In so far as the functions of such commissions are really regulative, like the functions of the bank examiners, they may for the present perform a useful public service.  These commissions should be constituted partly as bureaus of information and publicity, and partly as an administrative agency to secure the effective enforcement of the law.  In case the Sherman Anti-Trust Law were repealed, the law substituted therefor should define the kind of combination among corporations and the kind of agreements among railroads which were permissible, and the commission should be empowered to apply the law to any particular consolidation or contract.  Similar provision should be made in respect to railroad mergers, and the purchases by one railroad of the stock of another.  The purposes for which new securities might be legitimately issued should also be defined in the statute, and the commission allowed merely to enforce the definitions.  Common carriers should be obliged, as at present, to place on record their schedules of rates, and when a special or a new rate was made, notification should be required to the commission, together with a statement of reasons.  Finally the commission should have the completest possible power of investigating any aspect of railway and corporation management or finance the knowledge of which might be useful to Congress.  The unflinching use of powers, vaguely sketched above, would be sufficient to prevent mere abuses, and they could be granted without making any body of officials personally responsible for any of the essential details of corporation management.

If the commission is granted the power to promulgate rates, to control the service granted to the public, or to order the purchase of new equipment, it has become more than a regulative official body.  It has become responsible for the business management of the corporation committed to its charge; and again it must be asserted that mixed control of this kind is bound to take the energy and initiative out of such business organizations.  Neither has any necessity for reducing public service corporations to the level of industrial minors been sufficiently demonstrated.  In the matter of service and rates the interest of a common carrier is not at bottom and in the long run antagonistic to the interest of its patrons.  The fundamental interest of a common carrier is to develop traffic, and this interest coincides with the interest in general of the communities it serves.  This interest can best be satisfied by allowing the carrier freedom in the making of its schedules—­subject only to review in particular cases.  Special instances may always exist of unnecessarily high or excessively discriminatory rates; and provisions should be made for the consideration of such cases, perhaps, by some court specially organized for the purpose; but the