Eddy, Arthur Jerome: The new competition: an examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world ; the change from a competitive to a cooperative basis (New York [u.a.], 1912)

THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH

3

compete one against another by offering to work for lower
wages or longer hours, that sort of competition is dead.”
The tendency with the unions is to go a step further
and say: “You shall not even compete in the amount of
work you do per day, but each man shall do so much and
no more.” A crude solution of a pressing problem; a very
curt answer to the proposition, “Competition is the life of
trade.”

Ill
The Socialist would eliminate competition altogether, a
cardinal principle of his philosophy being that it is not
only wasteful but inherently wrong, and the Socialist must
be reckoned with. He is abroad in the land, he is making
himself felt at the polls, he is winning and holding offices,
he is causing the leaders of the older parties no little
anxiety. Why? Because the people are becoming So-
cialists ?
Not at all.
Socialism as Socialism probably has little if any greater
appeal to-day than it had a generation ago. It will always
have its ardent followers, but in its more logical form it is
too abstract a theory to be understood and attract generally.
Its practical suggestions are absorbed by older political
organizations, with the result that the Socialist party is ever
a band of enthusiasts “crying loudly in the wilderness.”
The strength of Socialism at the moment lies in the
fact that some of its demands coincide with the tendencies
of the hour. Say, if you please, the world has caught up
with Socialism in certain directions, and propositions that
seemed revolutionary twenty-five years ago—yes, ten years
ago—are now debated as reasonable, are even turned into
laws.
More or less unconsciously the labor movement has