If the interest of a corporation is so essentially hostile to the public
interest as to require the sort of official supervision provided by the
New York Public Service Commission Law, the logical inference therefrom
is not a system of semi-official and semi-private management, but a
system of exclusively public management. The logical inference therefrom
is public ownership, if not actual public operation. Public ownership is
not open to the same theoretical objections as is government by
commission. It is not a system of divided responsibility. Political
conditions and the organization of the American civil service being what
they are, the attempt of the authorities to assume such a responsibility
might not be very successful; but the fault would in that case reside in
the general political and administrative organization. The community
could not redeem the particular responsibility of owning and operating a
railroad, because it was not organized for the really efficient conduct
of any practical business.
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