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?