368 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the German government, as a social individual, should not buy up and manage such a business as the railroad ; only so far as the business itself is concerned it must conduct it upon the prin- ciples which control the industrial world as a whole. It may introduce such reforms into it as are demanded by the public sentiment that finds expression in legislation, sooner than they will be introduced into other concerns. But it becomes at once in tendency as conservative as other great concerns, and must adapt itself to the demands of the business world of which it is a part. The government has then separate functions. On the one side, it formulates and brings to a focus public sentiment in so-called legislation, and conducts a police activity, national and international, over against classes of society and human impulses which are as yet not so socially organized as are the bulk of its members with their dominant impulses. On the other side, being an institution which is as definitely independent as other corporations within the community, it may undertake a very limited number of industrial and commercial concerns, which business c\olution has carried to such a point of perfection that they lie safely within its domain.
While we recognize this possibility, we must, on the other side, recognize with equal distinctness that the functions of gov- ernment, as an institution, are merging with equal rapidity into the industrial world which it is supposed to control. The whole work of legislation is not onl}' dependent upon public sentiment, at least in democratic countries, but it is finding constantly fuller expression in other channels of publicity. The newspaper, in its various forms of journal and magazine, is effecting changes that are assumed to be those which follow governmental action. If only it becomes possible to focus public sentiment upon an issue in the delicate organism of the modern civilized community, it is as effective as if the mandate came from legislative halls, and frequently more so. This is true, not simply in the public reaction upon the justice of movements like those of great strikes and lockouts, but even in the interpretation of the methods of indus- trial and commercial activity. What the court does in reinter- preting laws is being done in increasing extent by simply closer
