The express service would represent too unimportant and too different an activity from railroad freight service to be efficiently handled now by the railroads. And mere regulation, as has been seen, affords no solution, for the profits and the equipment represent but an infinitesimal part of the operating expenses. At this point, the Socialist or the socialist or the person who falls loosely into the category of "radical" or perhaps even the merely "liberal" advocate of the public ownership of public utilities will doubtless exclaim: "But why compensate at all? Isn't it bad enough to have so long permitted a group of entrepreneurs to grow rich by exploiting for their own gain a field which all experience outside the confines of North America proves a field of public endeavor? Why add insult to injury by actually paying them for rendering unto the people the things which belong to the people? Why shall not the Government establish its own express service, as it established the parcel-post, and leave the express companies, so long unchallenged in their activities, to meet Government competition as best they may? If they can meet it, well and good--if they can't, the essentially parasitic nature of their business is proved beyond cavil." Very good, gentlemen; and if he may be permitted a personal reference, the writer of these lines is in perfect accord with you. The rates of the private express companies under your plan would still be under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and accordingly these private agencies would be unable to compete unfairly with the new Government service by establishing along any of the more popular routes rates far below the cost of the service, in order to cripple the Government service along these routes and hence in its entirety. Moreover, there is every probability that the legislative grant to the Government of a monopoly of the express service of the United States would be upheld by the courts, for a good case could be made out for the essential nature of the express business as a part of the mail business in which the Government has been granted a monopoly. Indeed, monopoly was originally granted the Government mail service to prevent the competition which the Wells-Fargo Company soon after its organization was conducting in the business of carrying letters.