Having complete control, Mr. Bryan attempted what the politicians who talked most aggressively about the trusts had consistently refused to do--he attempted to define and precisely state the remedies for objectionable combinations. Other leaders had discussed "good" and "bad" trusts, but they had not attempted the mathematics of the problem. In the platform of his party, Mr. Bryan wrote: "A private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. We therefore favor the vigorous enforcement of the criminal law against guilty trust magnates and officials and demand the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it impossible for private monopoly to exist in the United States." In this paragraph, there is of course nothing new; but it continues: "Among the additional remedies we specify three: first, a law preventing the duplication of directors among competing corporations; second, a license system which will, without abridging the rights of each state to create corporations or its right to regulate as it will foreign corporations doing business within its limits, make it necessary for a manufacturing or trading corporation engaged in interstate commerce to take out a federal license before it shall be permitted to control as much as 25 per cent of the product in which it deals, a license to protect the public from watered stock and to prohibit the control by such corporation of more than 50 per cent of the total amount of any product consumed in the United States; and third, a law compelling such licensed corporations to sell to all purchasers in all parts of the country on the same terms after making due allowance for cost of transportation." In dealing with railway corporations, the Democratic platform proposed concretely the valuation of railways, taking into consideration the physical as well as other elements; an increase in the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission, giving it the initiative with reference to rates and transportation charges and the power to declare any rate illegal on its own motion, and to inspect railway tariffs before permitting them to go into effect; and finally an efficient supervision and regulation of railroads engaged in interstate commerce. Mr. Bryan's proposals, particularly with regard to trusts, were greeted with no little derision on the part of many practical men of affairs, but they had, at least, the merit of being more definite in character than any statement of anti-trust policy which had been made hitherto, except by the Socialists in advocating public ownership. The Republicans, for example, contented themselves with simply proposing the amendment of the Sherman law in such a manner as to "give to the federal government greater supervision and control over and secure greater publicity in the management of that class of corporations engaged in interstate commerce having power and opportunity to effect monopolies."