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)

TRUE VS. FALSE COMPETITION

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and husbanded his resources for the final dash, surprising
his opponent.
Or, a strong runner may take it easy and win without
being obliged to exhaust all his energy. It is all a matter
of knowledge of past performances, watchfulness during
the contest and the exercise of good judgment at each
stage of the race.
In such a race the competition is keen, real, and bene-
ficial.
Suppose, however, the two runners, instead of running
on the same track where each may know what the other is
doing and govern himself accordingly, are started on sep-
arate tracks. Each knows he is to run a mile against the
other, but as neither can see what the other is doing, the
only prudent thing is for each to run the entire distance as
fast as he can, to run to the point of exhaustion.
In such a race there is no real, no true competition.
The runners are not competing one against the other, but
each is running against himself, doing the best he can re-
gardless. At the end when records are compared they find
that both expended a large amount of energy needlessly—
the winner in running faster than necessary, the loser in
making a hopeless contest.
To make the point still clearer—suppose the two run-
ners start at the same moment on the same track as under
the first hypothesis and for the first half they are side by
side and the competition is real and keen. At the end of
the half mile the track divides, the diverging lines are
separated by a barrier so high neither runner can know
what the other is doing. What is the inevitable result?
From the moment they lose sight of one another all real
competition ceases, each man puts forth all his strength
and runs until he collapses. That is false or pseudo com-
petition.
A man may run against time, jump to heat a record,