_The Impossibility of a Laissez-faire Policy._--Great indeed is the contrast between the present condition and one in which the government had little to do but to let industry alone. Letting free competitors alone was once desirable, but leaving monopolies quite to themselves is not to be thought of. It would, indeed, lead straight to socialism, under which the government would lay hands on business in so radical a way as to remove the private _entrepreneurs_ altogether. If we should try to do nothing and persist too long in the attempt, we might find ourselves, in the end, forced to do everything. What is of the utmost importance is the kind of new work the government is called on to do. It is chiefly the work of a sovereign and not that of a producer. It is the work of a law-giving power, which declares what may and what may not be done in the field of business enterprise. It is also the work of a law-enforcing power, which makes sure that its decrees are something more than pious wishes or assertions of what is abstractly right. All of this is in harmony with the old conception of the state as the protector of property and the preserver of freedom. The people's interests, which the monopoly threatens, have to be guarded. The right of every private competitor of a trust to enter a field of business and to call on the law for protection whenever he is in danger of being unfairly clubbed out of it, is what the state has to preserve. It is only protecting property in more subtle and difficult ways than those in which the state has always protected it. The official who restrains the plundering monopoly, preserves honest wealth, and keeps open the field for independent enterprise does on a grand scale something that is akin to the work of the watchman who patrols the street to preserve order and arrest burglars.