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the power of arbitrarily raising a commercial price. Also any uncontrolled monopoly price is equivalent to a tax, since vendees have no redress against extortion. For example, a monopoly of salt is a favorite form of taxation, and, when the power to enforce such a monopoly is lodged with the sovereign, it is legitimate. Vested in private, or quasi-private hands, its exercise has usually led to revolt. Queen Elizabeth nearly brought on a rebellion by her grants of monopolies, one of which, in a test case, the King's Bench held illegal,10 because the Crown alone cannot tax the subject without the consent of the rest of Parliament.

Nor do I remember an instance in which any modern people, relatively free, has endured patiently this absorption of a sovereign power by private persons for private purposes. Beyond controversy America does not endure private monopoly patiently, and the abuse of private monopoly by individuals has led to the regulation by government of the prices charged by most so-called public utilities, such as railway rates, water rates, gas rates, telephone rates and the like. Other monopolies the people have tried to suppress by statutes like the Sherman Act, but legislation can never enforce competition where people do not wish to compete, though legislation may readily destroy a civilization, as it often has in the past. Especially legislation is used to confiscate, either directly or indirectly, private property, and, as I have tried to show, favored classes usually have suffered from such confiscations, when they have permitted themselves to become too much attenuated, and to be caught between two adversaries, who have combined in an attack, because they have been too greedy. It was so with the feudal nobles, it has been so with the modern British landlords, and it promises to be so, unless they take heed, with American capitalists.

I will take, to illustrate my thesis, an arbitration held 10 Case of Monopolies, 11 Reports, 84.

in a late strike on the Boston Elevated Railway, whose rates are fixed by law. A strike occurred, and ultimately the issue was narrowed to the question whether as between a reasonable advance in wages and a reduction in reasonable dividends, the loss should be shared, or should fall wholly on capital. The board of arbitration being divided, the decision rested with the chairman, a banker, who is also a lawyer. He held, in substance, that, the laborer having no interest in the property, his wages must be a fixed charge on earnings, and, as such, if reasonable, must take precedence of a division of profits. As the law stands, I can see no escape from this reasoning, but to me it demonstrates the fallacy of the modern legal theory that labor has no property rights in the industry which it promotes. Had it such recognized rights it would share in profits and losses, and would be interested with, and not antagonistic to, capital. Most certainly labor has in fact some property rights in industry, since it can defend those rights by force, just as the mediaeval villein had some rights in his land, and just as the Irish farmer has asserted and established his tenant right. With that right recognized by law, modern society would, apparenty, become cohesive. With that right unrecognized by law, but maintained by force, we have, what is in substance social warfare, waged with more or less violence, as it was so long waged in Ireland. Also I take it to be indisputable that the ablest and most intelligent industrial administrators of the present day recognize tacitly property rights in labor, and endeavor to induce their workmen to become investors in their enterprises, that labor may have a common interest with capital in profits. In this policy the United States Steel Corporation is conspicuous.

Nevertheless, private individuals, however enlightened, can reach no comprehensive results in large movements such as these, unless they are sustained by a legal principle enforced by the courts, for it is evident that private

agreements may be broken, or managements may change, and worst of all, labor without legal protection, has no guaranty against dishonesty or negligence in directors. Yet if monopolies are to submit to State regulation in prices on the one hand, and, at the same time, on the other, are to be subjected to unrestrained attacks by workmen for advances in wages, while workmen are indifferent to profits, it is self-evident that sooner or later capital must, to protect itself, either seize upon the rate-regulating power, or else be ground between the upper and the nether millstone. I have here tried to show that every wealthy class, which has allowed itself to be attenuated and isolated, has met this fate, within the long interval which has elapsed since the Norman Conquest.

Assuming for a moment my argument to be sound, it does not appear to be excessively arduous to formulate a legal theory to cover the rights of labor in monopolies, supposing that the status of monopoly should be first established in each case, by something tantamount to judicial decree. Nor would it be difficult for a court to determine whether, as a matter of fact, a monopoly existed, if a monopoly should be held to inhere in the power arbitrarily to raise prices. Workingmen entering the employment of corporations thus recognized and regulated by the State, would not serve as men hired during the pleasure of a master, but as civil servants, holding during good behavior, with corresponding promotion, and a pension after a term of years. They would probably be guaranteed some minimum living wage to be increased by a percentage on profits, an agreed portion of which might be paid in the securities of the company, as the United States Steel sells its share to its employes at reduced rates. Also, under Government oversight, monopolies would pass into the category of trust estates, whose directors would be responsible as trustees, receiving compensation commensurate with their responsibility.

To such a proposition it will be objected that our gov

ernments are unequal to the effort; that the government of the United States in especial was rather designed to restrain than to stimulate domestic administrative energy, and that it would collapse under the strain. I admit the abstract truth of this proposition, but I protest that it is not an argument against either the wisdom or the necessity of recognizing the rights of labor in industry, provided such rights exist. On the contrary, I maintain that it is a conclusive argument against the toleration of a type of government which is, in its very essence, unequal to the weight cast upon it by the growth of modern society.

Governments, for our purposes, may be divided into two classes the deliberative and the administrative. Of the deliberative class that of the United States is an extreme example. The Roman Empire was, possibly, the highest specimen which has ever existed of the purely administrative variety. Certainly we could not, even if we would, try to create a modern Roman Empire, but we might very well assimilate some of its mechanical principles. An administrative government primarily consists of a permanent, cohesive and unified staff, which we call a civil service, presided over by a removable chief. This vital core, like any other trained staff, evolves a general policy which is executed through departments, just as the staff of an army, of a railway, or of an industrial organism operates now. The essential is that the administrative staff shall be protected against legislative meddling. A legislature might perhaps approve or reject a policy in bulk, or grant or deny money, but a legislature should not be permitted to embroil a complex and digested system by amending it in substance. For a legislature is, probably, next to a court, the most inefficient and incapable administrative body known to man. Therefore, the American experiment, of government by heterogeneous and independent commissions, to which the legislature delegates a mixture of administrative and judicial functions; combined with courts, which are, in reality, administrative chambers because

they are endowed with legislative attributes, 11 is, from the administrative standpoint, inherently vicious. And, from the administrative standpoint, this system is self-evidently vicious, because, instead of incarnating the principle of unity, order and sequence, which is the basis of good administration, it incarnates the principle of dispersion and chaos, which is fatal to good administration. Our own experience shows the vice of legislative interference with administration. Adminstration has always been the weak spot in our government, and yet, taken as a whole, the administrative record of our national executive department, even under all the limitations and embarrassments to which Congress and the courts have subjected it, has not been intolerably bad, and where free from Congressional interference it has been good. You may try it by what standard you will. No better educational institutions exist in America, or in the world, than our military schools. I doubt if there are any so good. Our army and navy, though costly because of Congress, are, and ever have been, our pride. The engineering work our government has done has been beyond praise. Our science is excellent. Even more-I will take our diplomacy. Although our diplomacy has been, so to speak, amateur; although Congress has never cared to create a trained corps of diplomatists; I doubt if, on the whole, considering our performance from General Washington's inauguration down, any other nation has been better served. Supposing the President of the United States had possessed from the beginning even the somewhat limited control over Congress which an English prime minister exercises over Parliament, I think it not improbable that our civil service might have approached, in quality, our military service, nor in the future do I see much reason to fear that, were the President given the power necessary for such a work, our civil service could not be raised to almost any degree of efficiency.

11 See Theory of Social Revolutions, Brooks Adams, chapt. 3.

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