REGULATION  OF  PUBLIC  UTILITIES  147

mately  to  the  value  of  their  franchises,  public  audit
will  increasingly  protect  both  public  and  stockholder;
public  inspection  will  keep  up  the  standard  of  the
service;  capital  will  get  its  interest;  managerial  skill
and  enterprise  will  get  its  compensation;  the  public
will  get  its  low  rates  and  taxes.  It  will,  therefore,
appear,  that  franchise  taxation  is  proposed  not  as  a
sole  solution  of  the  railway  problem,  but  as  a  flexible,
practicable,  speedy  supplement  to  the  necessarily  more
rigid  policy  of  regulation.
The  people  should  have  the  benefit  of  monopoly,  and
how  can  this  benefit  be  better  secured  to  the  people
than  by  charging  the  corporation  a  fair  price  for  what
the  people  do  for  it,  leaving  the  corporation  free  to
prosecute  its  private  business  in  its  own  way?