This quote comes from Charles Van Hise, out of his book"Concentration and Control"(Google Books archive); archive.org
This is a snapshot of page 262
Take the time to read those pages, 262 and 263. You should read the whole book really. But we all need to become more familiarized with progressivism if we are to be more effective against them. Here is how it is presented:
The plan presented does not involve taking over property or its management. Indeed, it does not involve anything whatever except securing to the public a reasonable price in the same manner that reasonable prices have been secured from the public utilities, the only way in which it has been found practicable to do this. It is probably the only satisfactory way in which fair prices can be secured from the great industrial corporations. Under the plan proposed the industrial concentrations remain private property in charge of those who own them just as at present. Being granted the privilege of cooperation in restraint of trade, they are forbidden to take advantage of the public by charging unreasonable prices ; and if forbidden so to charge, there must be some organism which will enforce the prohibition. The prohibition probably could be enforced by lawsuit under common law; and therefore the proposal made simply gives to an efficient administrative body authority to do what the courts probably have power to do under the common law, but which they could not efficiently perform. Those who hold up the bogy of socialism because of the modest proposal to allow commissions to regulate prices, if they reflect, must conclude that they have only a bogy.
Hise makes it sound so innocent. We won't take your property from you, we'll just tell you how to run it. And it's only to regulate prices. Of course, they won't regulate anything else.
