bility to capital and promoting its transfer promptly and efficiently from the industries where it is not needed to those where it will render its highest service.

II

THE TRUSTS AND THE PUBLIC

THE discussion now going on in regard to the regulation of large corporations, popularly known as "trusts," would probably be more intelligent if there were a more careful definition of the objects sought and a more definite understanding of the interests to be served by such regulation. There has been so much of passionate declamation on the one hand and so much of strong resentment on the other that the true issues have been to a large extent obscured in a mist which the thoughtful voter would find it difficult to penetrate if he should be called upon to vote on the subject. It is obviously for the interests of those who have really anything at stake, whether as the promoters of important enterprises, as investors in securities, or simply as the

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consumers of "trust-made goods," that all sides of the question should be fairly presented and dispassionately considered. The biblical mandate, Come now, let us reason together," should be given a sufficiently broad application to include a recognition of concrete facts as well as abstract principles. It has been one of the distinguishing qualities of the AngloSaxon peoples,-which has marked them off from their Latin rivals,—that they have not been too hasty to adopt abstractions as a rule of action. They have shown a respect for "vested rights,” even when those rights have grown into abuses, which has deprived their political progress of such picturesque episodes as the abolition of the old calendar, the voting away of privileges in a night, and the tearing open of the sepulchres of kings, which marked the Revolution in France, but has contributed on the whole to their more solid

progress in the difficult art of linking economic development and the security of property with government by universal suffrage.

In dealing with the problems growing out of new economic developments, there is no reason to doubt that the American people will in the long run. proceed with the same sobriety, sanity, and respect for their real interests with which they have proceeded to the solution of similar problems in the past. With a presidential campaign at hand, however, care should be taken to guard against hasty judgments, and above all, against reasoning to an apparently sound conclusion from premises which are falsely assumed. If the premise is sound, that all large corporations are inimical by their very essence to the economic, political, or moral life of the nation, a means will be found for destroying them. If this premise is not sound, but if only certain phases of corporation management, and not all, are injurious to the national welfare, then care should be taken in removing the unsound timbers that that majestic fabric of our economic power, which makes us the admiration and envy of all peoples, is not weakened or brought down in ruins.

sumer.

In clearing the ground of the rubbish of much of the current discussion, it is desirable that certain distinctions should be made as to the objects sought by further regulation of corporations. One of the distinctions which the advocates of further regulation may fairly be asked to make is, whether their essential object is the protection of the investor or the conIt is obvious that these two interests might be quite antagonistic. It is to the interest of the investor, in a narrow sense at least, to get as much from the public as he can by means of large profits and exclusive privileges for the corporations whose stocks or bonds he holds. It is to the interest of the consumer, on the other hand, to limit the profits of the investor and to restrict the privileges of the corporation whose products he desires to

use.

From a broad point of view there is a certain harmony of interest even where there appears to be antagonism, since a far-sighted corporate management will seek, on the one hand, to keep profits