20 TEE SUN. 



seek no profit, nor any limitation to tlieir liabilities, If some 

 can live by act of Congress, others will have to steal or stance. 



GOVERNAIENT CONTROL. 



Government control, is offered as a substitute for what is 

 called the 'corruption of corporations,' but this would be jump- 

 ing from the fiying pan into the fire. Is not the government 

 a corporation, the father and boss of all the rest? Better a 

 thousand ordinary corjiorations, than one governmental corpo- 

 ration, for there would then be some room for competition. 

 What if the government should run the roads 'at cost,' at whose 

 cost? unless it be at the people's cost. 



GOVERNMENT REGULATION. 



But, is it asked, are not public functions amenable to govern- 

 ment regulation? But the selling of a paper of needles is a 

 social function, which brought A. T. Stewart as exorbitant a 

 revenue as that of any bank president. Publishing the N. Y. 

 Herald is a social function, dependent too upon the small earn- 

 ings of the poor, yet its editor connnands a salary larger than 

 that of all the Presidents combined. Should Bennett and Stew- 

 art therefore be regulated by the constable? What principle of 

 liberty have they violated? Whom have they injured? Not 

 then, on socialistic grounds, can governmental interference be 

 justified. 



But it may be farther claimed that exclusive monopoly leads 

 to extortion, that there cannot well be but one gas company, 

 one water works, one telegraph and railroad between two 

 points, one pass through mountain canyons, one Iloosac tunnel, 

 one Panama canal, any more than there can be more than one 

 Atlantic ocean or Mississii)pi river; to block up these, would be 

 a crime, to make exorbitant charges, would be robbery, tliere- 

 fore, they should be regulated. Quite true, but the regulation 

 of a thing implies the legitimacy of the thing regulated. We 

 do not regulate the small pox but quarantine and abolish it. 

 So of corporations, their monojjoly rests in legislative pi'ivilege; 

 it cannot be regulated, it must be revoked. 



