CONSTRUCTIVE REMEDIES NEEDED 267 
legislation in Congress in the so-called Watson Bill, which 
has for its object the stabilization of the bituminous coal- 
mining industry. Coal-mining companies and corporations 
are released from the provisions of the anti-trust laws, but 
a Commission is created, and all corporations and consoli- 
dations must submit to the jurisdiction of the Commission 
as a condition to beginning operations. The Commission 
is authorized not only to pass upon the reasonableness of 
orices and profits, but also upon the financial structure of 
corporate consolidations and the question of whether new 
mining operations shall be permitted. The recognition of 
the generally-accepted standards and safeguards to labor 
are also made a condition of conducting operations under 
jurisdiction of the Commission. 
This constructive measure for the coal industry affords 
a model for establishing similar regulatory commissions 
in each basic industry with the object of facilitating con- 
solidation and thus realizing maximum economies and 
efficiency, but at the same time maintaining reasonable 
prices and profits, and protecting the industry against 
unsound expansion and overproduction. In addition to 
regulating production and distribution, it is also of funda- 
mental importance that such industrial commissions should 
be authorized to pass upon all new security issues in the 
various industries, and upon financial plans for consolida- 
tions and reorganizations. Such authority would prevent 
investment bankers, financiers, and others from exacting 
excessive underwriting fees and commissions, and from 
capitalizing productive gains which should properly be 
distributed in the form of lower prices or higher wages. 
[t would also free industry from the control of such bank- 
ers and financiers as may be more interested in dividend 
returns and in conventional methods of corporation finance 
than in real productive achievements. The Interstate Com-