DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42346#0250
23B
THE NEW COMPETITION
VI
When Adam Smith said, “It is to the interest of all those
who employ their land, labor, or stock, in bringing any com-
modity to market, but (that) the quantity never should ex-
ceed the effectual demand; and it is to the interest of all
other people that it never should fall short of that demand,”
he was very close to the human, the vital side of the problem
he was discussing, but he did not follow the matter further,
and from his day to this scarcely an economist has devoted
time and thought to the really great problem of intelligent
control of so-called “economic laws.”
If it is to the interest of the community that supply and
demand should be maintained as nearly as possible in a state
of equilibrium, then it should be the business of the com-
munity to devise ways and means for controlling the violent
fluctuations due to free competition.
In every country town the prices of small products of the
farm are the result of “free competition.” When the
weather is fair farmers “come to town” in such large num-
bers and bring so much to market, prices drop to absurdly
low figures; when the weather is bad little is brought in and
prices go up to absurdly high figures. One year there is a
shortage of crops and prices soar, the next, under the in-
centive of the high prices of the year before, a larger acreage
is planted, the season is good, crops are abundant, and prices
drop to a level that yields many farmers less than cost.
What are farmers doing to help these conditions? Are
they meekly submitting to the “law” of supply and demand?
Are they content with the doctrine of “free competition” ?
Not at all: they read and are guided by government crop re-
ports ; they are forming cooperative societies to control com-
petition, to introduce rational and scientific supervision over
THE NEW COMPETITION
VI
When Adam Smith said, “It is to the interest of all those
who employ their land, labor, or stock, in bringing any com-
modity to market, but (that) the quantity never should ex-
ceed the effectual demand; and it is to the interest of all
other people that it never should fall short of that demand,”
he was very close to the human, the vital side of the problem
he was discussing, but he did not follow the matter further,
and from his day to this scarcely an economist has devoted
time and thought to the really great problem of intelligent
control of so-called “economic laws.”
If it is to the interest of the community that supply and
demand should be maintained as nearly as possible in a state
of equilibrium, then it should be the business of the com-
munity to devise ways and means for controlling the violent
fluctuations due to free competition.
In every country town the prices of small products of the
farm are the result of “free competition.” When the
weather is fair farmers “come to town” in such large num-
bers and bring so much to market, prices drop to absurdly
low figures; when the weather is bad little is brought in and
prices go up to absurdly high figures. One year there is a
shortage of crops and prices soar, the next, under the in-
centive of the high prices of the year before, a larger acreage
is planted, the season is good, crops are abundant, and prices
drop to a level that yields many farmers less than cost.
What are farmers doing to help these conditions? Are
they meekly submitting to the “law” of supply and demand?
Are they content with the doctrine of “free competition” ?
Not at all: they read and are guided by government crop re-
ports ; they are forming cooperative societies to control com-
petition, to introduce rational and scientific supervision over