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)

COMPETITION IS WAR

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V
The benefits of competition have been classed as fol-
lows 1
1. “As the regulator of prices, this is the one on which
the greatest stress has been laid in the past.”
2. “As a stimulus to productive efficiency and espe-
cially to the introduction of new methods.”
3. “As a means of educating the community in rational
egoism, teaching its members that they must seek
their industrial success, not in giving as little as
possible to those with whom they deal, but as
much as possible.”
As a matter of fact, competition leads to precisely con-
trary results, and the fiercer the competition the more
disastrous the outcome.
I. Cooperation, whether voluntary or involuntary—
compelled by law—ds the only regulator of prices. Com-
petition, free and unfettered, is absolutely destructive to all
stability of prices. Before the Interstate Commerce Law,
regulating railway rates, competition reigned and rates
varied arbitrarily from day to day, from person to person,
from place to place, with countless rebates and secret fa-
vors; to a certain extent the railroads, from time to time,
cooperated to control conditions by pools and associations,
but not until the Government stepped in and called a halt to
vicious competition were rates regulated in any permanent
manner.
The proposition is too simple to call for demonstration
since every man knows that it is the appearance of a com-
petitor that causes prices and wages to drop, and every
1 By President Hadley, in the article referred to.