268 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

merce Commission was in 1920 given this regulatory power
over railroad finance, and the constructive benefits of this
grant to the railroads and to the public during the past
eight years can scarcely be overestimated.

ADVISORY “INSTITUTE” AND BOARD OF COORDINATION

The broad policies of inter-industry cooperation and
coordination should be worked out by industry itself.
There is no doubt that this can be done. A purely governmental
 board of coordination with administrative powers
 would be idealistically desirable but at the present time
unsound and impracticable.r It is undoubtedly true, however,
 that the voluntary cooperative action of industry
would be greatly facilitated by the creation of a formal
board of coordination, under governmental sanction, with
recommendatory powers to industry and to the Congress,
but without any direct supervisory or regulatory authority.
The personnel of such a board should be selected by and
should be representative of the basic industries, but its
members should be appointed by the President and all
salaries and expenses paid by the Government. Its functions
 should consist in collecting, publishing, and disseminating
 industrial data, and in studying and recommending
constructive policies to industry. In conjunction with the
board itself there should be created an advisory council
or conference of wide industrial representation, to which
the board could make recommendations of required legislation
 for approval and submission to the Congress.
Creating such a board of coordination by the voluntary
action of industry, and clothing it with an official character
 as representative of industry by governmental sanction,
 would enable industry at once to establish an agency

c 1 0, the Road to Plenty,” by Foster and Catchings; Houghton Mifilin
0., 1928.