Now, hitherto, their efficiency has been partly
the product of the unusual freedom they have enjoyed. Unquestionably
they cannot continue to enjoy any similar freedom hereafter; but in
restricting it care should be taken not to destroy with the freedom the
essential condition of the efficiency. The essential condition of
efficiency is always concentration of responsibility; and the decisive
objection to government by commission as any sufficient solution of the
corporation problem is the implied substitution of a system of divided
for a system of concentrated responsibility.
This objection will seem fanciful and far-fetched to the enthusiastic
advocates of reform by commission. They like to believe that under a
system of administrative regulation abuses can be extirpated without any
diminution of the advantages hitherto enjoyed under private management;
but if such proves to be the case, American regulative commissions will
establish a wholly new record of official good management. Such
commissions, responsible as they are to an insistent and uninformed
public opinion, and possessed as they inevitably become of the peculiar
official point of view, inevitably drift or are driven to incessant,
vexatious, and finally harmful interference.
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