Mr. Walker's whole argument is one in favor of the legalization of the pool, though he carefully avoids the word which grates so harshly on the American ear. He makes the broad statement, without offering the least proof in support of it, that measures have been everywhere adopted "to subdue and ameliorate the evil results of inordinate and excessive competitive strife," and then he asks: "Has not the time come for a reversal of the legislative attitude? Would it not be well for Congress, State legislatures and the judiciary to cease their futile attempts to maintain unqualified freedom of competition, and substitute therefore a recognition of the right of every industry to combine under proper supervision, and to make agreements for the maintenance of just and reasonable prices, the prevention of the enormous wastage consequent upon warlike conditions, and the preservation of existing institutions through the years to come?" Mr. Walker then proceeds to make the bold prediction that revolution and anarchy will follow if the demands of the railroad corporations are not complied with, saying: "Unless this course is adopted a social convulsion may fairly be apprehended, forced by the universal and necessary repudiation of existing laws and rules of decision, and by the general formation of combinations without their pale." This is a strange threat indeed, and unworthy of a man who has held as great a public trust as Mr. Walker has. The article also contains the statement that combinations do not extinguish competition. "They regulate it," says Mr. Walker, "with more or less efficiency, and they often go so far as to suspend its operation in respect to one or more important features of the strife; for example, the price paid or the time consumed. But as long as the employer or the purchaser has a choice, so long there is competition." Here is a sample of Mr. Walker's irony, for the choice which the shipper has under the pool is simply Hobson's choice. Mr. Walker has also an article in the August, 1892, number of the _Forum_, the substance of which is to show that organizations among railroad companies, like the Western Traffic Association, are necessary for the purpose of restraining competition among them. He holds that such competition as exists in almost all other lines of business "is radically vicious to all interests, however pleasant and desirable it may seem to self-styled anti-monopolists," and that "it is a calamity not only to the owners of the roads, but to the public also."