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)

OPEN-PRICE ASSOCIATION

i37

In organizing an association it is important to press the
open price policy no farther than the most skeptical member
is prepared to go. Adjust the strain to the weakest link.
The chances are that many present will be more or less
familiar with the attempts and failures of price-fixing com-
binations; if so, each will have his tale of woe, how this man
and that man “did not live up to the agreement,” how they
promised to maintain prices “and then went out after all
the business in sight at any old price,” etc., etc.; the com-
plaints are as familiar as the story of an after-dinner
speaker.
This condition of profound distrust is a fact to be dealt
with, not ignored. It is just as well to open the explana-
tion of the reporting plan with about these words:
“Let us assume that all you think of one another is true
and that not a man present is to be trusted outside this
room.
“By assuming the worst there will be no unpleasant sur-
prise in store—events may prove we are mistaken.
“Acting upon the assumption that no man will do as
he agrees unless he wants to or can’t help it, let us not agree
to do anything simply because we ought to, but only those
things we either want to do or can’t help doing.
“And when we get along a little farther and generate
a little more confidence in one another we will agree to a
few things we ought to do, but for the present, no.”
XX
There was a set of men who had been in a price-fixing
combination that had fallen apart on account of failures on
the part of this one and that one to observe the agreement,
the feeling of one toward another was so bitter it seemed
impossible to induce them to adopt the open price policy,
but it was done and in this way: