are inconsistent and, in part, false to the facts. The point, however, which I wish to emphasize for my present purpose is that this piece of legislation was produced by a legislative compromise of opposing "views," no view being based on anything better than popular clamor, hasty prejudice, and political ambition. Neither can any legislation of a similar kind on a cognate subject ever be produced except in the same way and affected with the same vice. In strictly political matters that fact does no great harm; but in industrial matters it is fraught with mischief.
The Interstate Commerce Act is still under trial; it is too soon to make up its record and pass judgment on its history. I have used it here only as a concrete illustration, the latest and most important of the attempts to regulate by law and administrative machinery a case of natural monopoly—perhaps the most difficult one which the experience of mankind has yet met. I have not been in a position to examine and judge of the allegations made by railroad men, especially in the Northwest, about the mischievous effects of the law; the law undoubtedly forms a convenient scapegoat on which to charge the consequences of all errors and faults. That is another evil of the law. It has seemed to me, however, that the law was rapidly working out to a dilemma like this: if the Act is interpreted as the public expect, it will do great harm to the railroad business; if the stress is laid on the saving clause about substantially equal conditions, the Act will be reduced to a dead letter.
I must reserve for another essay the connection of laws about monopoly with the coming conflict between democracy and plutocracy, which is really the most important aspect of such laws.
