let industry alone. Letting free competitors
alone was once desirable, but leaving monopolies quite to themselves
is not to be thought of. It would, indeed, lead straight to socialism,
under which the government would lay hands on business in so radical a
way as to remove the private _entrepreneurs_ altogether. If we should
try to do nothing and persist too long in the attempt, we might find
ourselves, in the end, forced to do everything. What is of the utmost
importance is the kind of new work the government is called on to do.
It is chiefly the work of a sovereign and not that of a producer. It
is the work of a law-giving power, which declares what may and what
may not be done in the field of business enterprise. It is also the
work of a law-enforcing power, which makes sure that its decrees are
something more than pious wishes or assertions of what is abstractly
right. All of this is in harmony with the old conception of the state
as the protector of property and the preserver of freedom. The
people's interests, which the monopoly threatens, have to be guarded.
The right of every private competitor of a trust to enter a field of
business and to call on the law for protection whenever he is in
danger of being unfairly clubbed out of it, is what the state has to
preserve. It is only protecting property in more subtle and difficult
ways than those in which the state has always protected it. The
official who restrains the plundering monopoly, preserves honest
wealth, and keeps open the field for independent enterprise does on a
grand scale something that is akin to the work of the watchman who
patrols the street to preserve order and arrest burglars.

_A Possible Field for Production by the State._--There is a
possibility that in a few lines of production the American government
may so far follow the route marked out by European states as to own
plants and even operate them, and may do so _in the interest of
general competition_. It may construct a few canals, with the special
view to controlling charges made by railroads. It may own coal mines
and either operate them or control the mode of operating them, for the
purpose of curbing the exactions of monopolistic owners and securing a
continuous supply of fuel. It may even own some railroads for the sake
of making its control of freight charges more complete. Such actions
as these may be slightly anomalous, since they break away from the
policy of always regulating and n