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)

CHAPTER XV

VANISHING INDUSTRIES
I
When the expert is called in to see what, if anything,
can be done for a given industry the first inquiry should be
whether the industry is a diminishing or a growing indus-
try.
If it is diminishing or vanishing the case is desperate,
little can be done; it is not a question of bringing prosperity
to all, or even of the survival of the strongest, the problem
is how to make death easy, how to gradually close shop
after shop, plant after plant, with the least possible loss to
owners and community, or how to transform plants and
shops into factories for other products.
When the question is put to a group of men, “Is your
industry going forward or backward, what is the demand
to-day for your products as compared with a few years
ago?” it is disheartening when they are obliged to reply,
“Ten or twenty years will see our finish,” disheartening not
so much on their account, because the good business man
discounts the inevitable, lays up against what cannot be
helped, but on account of the labor and localities involved.
Sections of cities, small towns, entire localities, may be af-
fected, even depopulated by the closing of factories, the ex-
haustion of mines, and it is not so easy for labor and lo-
calities to discount the future—they have neither the means
nor the foresight.

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