REGULATION  OF  PUBLIC  UTILITIES  135

ticular  features  would  be  an  all  engrossing  occupation
for  legislators.  To  make  a  specific  law  for  each  class  and
case  would  seem  to  be  an  impossible  undertaking.  The
Legislature  of  Massachusetts,  which  ranks  high  in
intelligence,  alertness,  and  honesty,  is  to-day  struggling
with  the  New  Haven  and  Boston  &  Maine  merger,  and
I  venture  to  say  that  not  a  single  legislator  feels  himself
competent  to  the  the  task.  If  all  similar  questions
required  the  action  of  the  legislature,  what  would
become  of  the  docket  and  the  time  of  legislators?
The  Commission
The  already  established  trend  toward  regulation  by
national  or  state  commission,  to  which  it  is  proposed
that  the  exercise  of  regulative  governmental  power
shall  be  delegated,  brings  us  to  a  consideration  somewhat ­
  in  detail  of  the  reasons  for,  and  the  possibilities
of,  the  commission  idea  as  applied  to  the  regulation,
under  statute,  of  special  franchises  or  public  utilities,
either  by  rate  making,  by  taxation,  or  by  any  other
means  whatsoever.
Mr.  Henry  Clews  voices  a  pregnant  truth  when  he
says  that  a  large  part  of  the  gross  evils  in  trusts  and
syndicates  and  public  service  corporations  are  traceable
to  the  fact  that  “legislatures  have  not  kept  pace  with
national  progress.”  Similarly,  President  Woodrow
Wilson  of  Princeton  University,  says:
The  corporation  lawyers  of  this  country  know  what  is  going
on;  the  legislators  do  not.  I  want  to  say  to  all  corporation
lawyers,  “if  you  would  save  the  corporation,  you  will  come
out  from  cover  and  tell  the  legislators  what  is  needed.  You
know  what  is  needed;  they  don’t.  By  telling  them  you  will
save  the  corporation.  If  you  don’t  you  will  have  the  mob  at
i  its  doors  in  a  decade.”