A sixth contradiction is the wide-spread desire to regulate capitalization. Now it may be that there have been abuses; but if one asks any of these critics what is the grievance to be remedied, great silence usually falls upon them, for they are unable to show any more relation between rate-making and either physical valuation or capitalization than there is between the price of a pair of suspenders and the physical valuation or capitalization of a department store. Railroads are continually importuned to make rates that will "move the business," as in the case of the Western road just cited, and those parts of the United States which have the highest railroad capitalization have the lowest average freight rate. If you will look at the _American Review of Reviews_ for the month of June, 1908, you will find a very interesting article by Interstate Commerce Commissioner Lane on "Railroad Capitalization and Federal Regulation." His program is a very simple one, and while pointing out that there should be some way of insuring that the proceeds of all railroad securities shall be actually invested in "acquisition of property, construction, completion, extension, or improvement of facilities, the improvement or maintenance of service and the discharge or lawful refunding of obligations," he says: "Fundamentally, there is at present no inter-dependence of capitalization and rate--the latter is not in law, nor in railroad policy, the child of the former--though railroad men have sometimes expediently urged the claim, and courts have sometimes too kindly given it their nod of sanction." Also, "The most potent kind of regulation is that which casts the burden upon the individual to do the regulating himself and makes him responsible to the law for dereliction; and the plan for the regulation of capitalization here presented is founded upon that theory--to require the directors of the railroad companies to make public announcement of their security issues, to publish the objects for which such issues are made, and be responsible for the use of the proceeds in the precise and limited manner announced. This is far too modest a program to please those who delight in elaborate methods of procedure involving much filing of forms and petitions and many hearings, appraisements, viseings, and solemn givings of consent; and without question it is not nearly as thoroughgoing a plan as others which have been devised. But the simpler the plan is, the better, if it may effect its purpose." He further says that his program