financial interests have become involved, the courts have proved to be incapable of undoing the deeds.  In practice the most sweeping remedy attempted under the law has been the dissolution of enormous combinations formed years after the law went into effect.  This has been called the job of unscrambling the eggs.  The most notable cases were those of the Standard Oil Company and of the Tobacco Company, decided in 1911, the results being absurdly futile.

Sec. 11. #Policy of monopoly-accepted-and-regulated.# A second policy may be called that of monopoly-accepted-and-regulated.  This is represented by the Interstate Commerce Act (at first weakly, and more vigorously after its amendment), and by the great mass of state legislation putting the local and interurban public utilities under the control of regulative commissions.  For some decades after these industries developed, the public faith was in competition as the effective regulator.  If monopolistic prices were too high, another company was chartered to build a parallel railroad or another horse-car line on the next street, or to lay down another set of gas pipes in the same block.  Almost from the first some students of the subject saw the wastefulness and futility of this kind of competition, and nearly a half century later the public reluctantly came to this view.  Still, sad to relate, the same history had to be repeated in regard to the telegraph and telephone industry, and in some quarters the ultimate outcome is not yet recognized.  The Interstate Commerce Act itself, with odd inconsistency, contains an anti-pooling provision (section 5) the purpose of which seems to have been to compel competition as to rates which is now practically impossible under the other provisions of the law.  The policy of “monopoly-accepted” was seen to involve as a necessary feature, public regulation of rates, to the point, if necessary, of absolutely fixing them.  The principle has come to be accepted that wherever competition ends there public regulation of prices and service begins.  Monopolistic enterprises are ipso facto quasi-public institutions.

Sec. 12. #Field of its application#.  This policy, gradually extending in practice, came to be applied to the class of industries which, for lack of a better name, are called local utilities.  The one characteristic that they all have in common is that the service, or product, which is sold requires for its delivery an expensive, permanent, physical plant, and some special use of public highways.  Thus gas pipes, water pipes, poles and wires for telegraph, telephones and electric light, street railways, regular steam railroads and some other minor industries all answer to this test.[16]