As long as such a method of supervision endures, no effective
regulation of commerce or industry is possible. A corporation is not a
commercial Pooh-Bah, divided into unrelated sections. It is an
industrial and commercial individual. The business which it transacts in
one state is vitally related to the business which it transacts in other
states; and even in those rare cases of the restriction of a business to
the limits of a single state, the purchasing and selling made in its
interest necessarily compete with inter-state transactions in the same
products. Thus the Constitutional distinction between state and
inter-state commerce is irrelevant to the real facts of American
industry and trade.
In the past the large corporations have, on the whole, rather preferred
state to centralized regulation, because of the necessary inefficiency
of the former. Inter-state railroad companies usually exercised a
dominant influence in those states under the laws of which they had
incorporated; and this influence was so beneficial to them that they
were quite willing for the sake of preserving it to subsidize the
political machine and pay a certain amount of blackmail.
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