Jacques Barzun on The Relation of the State to Industrial Action & Economics and Jurisprudence by Henry C. Adams, edited by Joseph Dorfman (American Panorama, 1967):

The Adams who wrote this book is not related to the Adams family represented in the preceding book or the one which follows it on this shelf of American books… He is, by comparison, relatively unknown, though his mind and work were original and the influence of his pioneering thought has been increasingly recognized.

The introduction by Professor Joseph Dorfman, himself a noted historian of economic thought, makes plain the circumstances in which Henry C. Adams (1851–1921) worked when he directed the statistical work of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first agency designed to curb the powerful American railroads’ anarchical practices and disregard of the public interest.

In reflecting on the acts of the two great powers of modern times – the state and big business – Adams was led to formulate the first searching theory of their permanent and desirable relation. The fact that he was a liberal in the finest tradition lends special importance to his views, for it was the liberal swing away from total laisser-faire toward the end of the nineteenth century which produced the network of restraining laws and practices now in force throughout the free world. It rejects a thoroughgoing socialization, which would merge the power of the state and that of big business, believing that this merger multiplies the power of each by infinity; and it acknowledges at the same time that a complete hands-off policy is neither possible in fact nor defensible in theory. Adams’s formulation of the equilibrium to be sought has thus the importance of both a fundamental charter and a prolegomenon to future speculation in these fields…

The Relation of the State to Industrial Action by Henry C. Adams is available at IWP Books.