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.