vidend. Private
enterprise has been invited to undertake a public work, yet public
interests are paramount.

Sec. 20. #Private and public interests to be harmonized.# If an extremely
abstract view is taken there is danger of losing sight of the real
problem, which is that of harmonizing these two interests in thought
and in public policy. Yet the extreme advocates of the private
control of railroads for a long time resented indignantly any public
interference with railroad rates and with railroad management as
an infringement of individual liberty. Before the passage of the
Interstate Commerce Act, in 1887, this position was inconsistently
taken by those in whose interests free competition had been violently
set aside at the very outset of railroad construction, and for whom
governmental interference had made possible great fortunes. It has
become generally recognized that the railroads ought not to be allowed
to change from a public to a private character just as it suits
their convenience. True, they are private enterprises as regards the
character of the investment, but they are public enterprises as to
their privileges, functions, and obligations.

Finally, it might be said that if there were none of these special
reasons for the public control of railways, there is an all-sufficient
general reason in the fact that a railroad is always, in some respects
and to some degree, a monopoly. Therefore, the railroad problem may be
viewed as but one aspect of the general problem of monopoly. To other
aspects of this problem we are now to turn our attention.

[Footnote 1: Returns for 1915. The following figures are from the
census taken in 1909.]

[Footnote 2: See A.T. Hadley, "Railroad Transportation," pp. 10, 32.]

[Footnote 3: See Vol. I, pp. 437, 438, 443.]

CHAPTER 28

THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIAL MONOPOLY

Sec. 1. Kinds of monopoly. Sec. 2. Political sources of monopoly. Sec. 3.
Natural agents as sources of monopoly. Sec. 4. Capitalistic monopoly;
aspects of the problem. Sec. 5. Industrial monopoly and fostering
conditions. Sec. 6. Growth of large industry in the nineteenth century. Sec. 7.
Methods of forming combinations. Sec. 8. Growth of combinations after
1880. Sec. 9. The great period of trust formation. Sec. 10. Height of the
movement toward combinations. Sec. 11. Motive to avoid competition.
Sec. 12. Motive to effect economies. Sec. 13. Profits from monopoly and
gains of promoters