The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in
one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little
business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack
of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any
exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice
proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action.
Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should,
without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself,
also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations
doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the
corporation derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some
monopolistic element or tendency in its business. There would be no
hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case
it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable
that supervision of corporations by the National Government need not go
so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over them by
so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce excellent
results.

When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth
century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in
industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the
beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a
matter of course that the several States were the proper authorities to
regulate, so far as was then necessary, the comparatively insignificant
and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are
now wholly different and wholly different action is called for. I believe
that a law can be framed which will enable the National Government
to exercise control along the lines above indicated; profiting by