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)

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THE NEW COMPETITION

and stable prices, and that those to whom they in turn sell
shall pay fair, uniform and stable prices.
At all events, these questions are open to discussion,
and certainly in no country that maintains a protective
tariff can the discussion be foreclosed by any appeal to so
doctrinaire a proposition as that “men should be free to
buy where they can buy the cheapest and sell where they
can sell the dearest.”

V
A man may have an “unalienable” right to “life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness,” as the Declaration of Inde-
pendence puts it, but whatever that sounding phrase
may mean in the abstract, it is certain he has no “unalien-
able” right to buy goods below their cost of production and
sell them above their fair value, he has no abstract right
to ruin either those from whom he buys or those to whom
he sells, nor has he any “unalienable” right to ruin com-
petitors.
He has no divine right to hire children to run his ma-
chines, women to do men’s work in his factories, men to
labor twelve hours per day.
Our fancied “rights” to do all these things have the
force of custom, nothing more. Every relation in life is
open to investigation, discussion and readjustment on a
right, or righter, basis.
Rights result from and are entirely dependent upon re-
lations. What one man’s rights are as against another
turn upon his relations to the other; the rights of father
against son, brother against brother, friend against friend,
partner against partner, employer against employee, com-
petitor against competitor, buyer against seller, all depend
upon and vary widely with those relationships.
In most of these relationships, and particularly in trade