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)

GROWTH OF CO-OPERATION

5i

While certain classes of the community are coming to-
gether and cooperating to produce larger results for the
money, other classes are organizing to get more money for
less effort.
Labor Unions.
Farmers’ Cooperative Societies.
The objects of these two great movements are to con-
trol supply and advance prices.
Labor unions seek to fix wages, and control the hours
and conditions of employment.
Farmers’ cooperative societies seek to do the same
thing—control, as far as possible, both the amount and the
marketing of output with a view to getting better prices.
As between the two great cooperative movements A and
B, the consumer—the man who pays the price—has less to
fear from the former than the latter.
Partnerships, corporations, trusts, are all in the direc-
tion of more for less money; labor unions and farmers’
organizations are all in the direction of less for more
money.

IX
There is still a third class of associations springing up.
While the large corporation and the trust are the natural
results of competitive conditions, each is simply a more
powerful competitive unit; competition, if curtailed at all
by the organization of' a trust, is curtailed only for the time
being, soon it is keener than ever, and consolidation may
follow consolidation to lessen its disastrous effects, or pro-
ducers, large and small, may form associations to control
in a measure the competition, and these associations may at-
tempt to do what labor unions and farmers’ societies do—•
control outputs and fix prices.