26 



W. G. Langivorthy Taylor 





Improvement 

 in govern- 

 ment through 

 specialized 

 administration 

 affects cor- 

 poration 

 methods. 



Influence of 

 universities 

 growing. 



The National 

 Monetary 

 Commission of 

 the United 

 States. 



The Aldrich 

 Plan for a 

 Reserve Asso- 

 ciation. 



distribution) there is no such entity as a corporation, perhaps 

 they could have given a better turn to the law. Such indeed is 

 theoretically the teaching of the law of equity; but equity has a 

 clearer vision when reinforced by economics and finance. Candi- 

 dates for the bar should be required to study political economy 

 and finance in the United States as they are in Europe. 



§21. Recent years mark a decided improvement in the Ameri- 

 can standard of lawgiving, which might seem a partial return to 

 the more primitive parliamentary dignity of the ante-caucus and 

 ante-boss era. The public, however, now pays more attention 

 than formerly to the universities and less to legislatures. The 

 movement is away from inconsiderate action and toward reasoned 

 deliberation. It is evidenced in the increased tendency of law- 

 giving bodies to accept expert advice; in the appointment in the 

 several states of permanent commissions on taxation, railroad, 

 and corporation control, and on other subjects previously a prey 

 to the haphazard raids of the legislative caucus, itself the off- 

 spring of campaign buncombe; in the closer connection of the 

 legislative with the social experiment, statistical, and pedagogic 

 branches of the state governments (the last found in the state 

 universities) ; and, most notably, in the appointment by the Con- 

 gress of the two permanent commissions on finance and on the 

 tariff. Nor must the extension of the powers of the Interstate 

 Commerce Commission and the erection of a court of commerce 

 be omitted from the account of social regeneration. An im- 

 pediment, perhaps, is found in the rapid infiltration into the 

 population of undesirable elements from abroad. 



The National Monetary Commission has begun its work by 

 the preparation and publication of a series of reports covering 

 the fields of domestic and foreign banking, with detailed statistics, 

 and calculated to afiford a world view of state activity in the 

 matter of social aid to the organization of private finance. The 

 mind of the public having thus been ripened upon the limitations 

 and possibilities of government interference and cooperation, a 

 plan has been presented to the Commission by Senator Aldrich, 

 intended to combine in the wisest way the dictates of theory and 



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