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.