offices, functions, and places, ministerial trafficking, public borrowing -all things with which competition has nothing to do. See also 174. Simple versus Complex Industry. 175. Complex Industry Is Difficult to Regulate. 357. COMPETITION DEPENDS ON NO ONE MOTIVE1 A very powerful source of the sentiment against competition and of the belief which many cherish that it cannot be a permanent feature of social life, lies in its connection with personal ill-feeling. It is often said to be in its very nature anti-social, a state of war instead of a state of peace, generating hostile passions instead of sympathy and love. The bloody conflicts of our brute ancestors have been replaced by something less obvious and open but-so we are told-equally bitter and destructive, morally speaking the same thing. Yet there is no inevitable association between competition and hostility. In great measure the selective process operates without generating personal feeling. A young man, for example, starts out in life with the purpose of following a certain profession-let us say the law. The experience of two or three years convinces him and others that he cannot succeed in this, and he makes his way into something else. About half the graduates of our law schools are eliminated in this way, and the same sort of thing takes place in other trades and professions. But the process is gradual and the eliminating forces, as a whole, impersonal; that is to say, they are too many, too intangible, to make an impression of wilful personal opposition. Disappointment may ensue, but not hatred; except in the case of weak and abnormally sensitive minds whose uncontrolled emotions lead them to ascribe every painful experience to the malignant purpose of others. So with commercial competition; a man's trade gradually increases or declines; but there is seldom any one person who can be fixed upon as the cause. In fact, while admitting the existence of a great deal of competitive bitterness, I believe that most men look upon the social conditions under which they work very much as the farmer looks upon the weather and other natural agents. They may make or mar him, and he thrives or suffers accordingly, but there is no single person to hold responsible. Adapted by permission from C. H. Cooley, "Personal Competition," Economic Studies, IV, 146-54. (American Economic Association, 1899.) Moreover, open and declared opposition is not the thing most likely to give rise to hatred and jealousy. Where a conflict takes place under recognized rules and conditions which are observed by both parties, it does not necessarily give rise to bitter feeling, no matter how dangerous and destructive it may be. The conditions of the open market, like the conditions of the field of battle, are conceived of as part of the necessary course of things and do not, in fairly reasonable men, generate personal hostility. Bitterness arises when there is, or is believed to be, something unfair, something exceptional, some infraction of the rules resulting in unjust discrimination. In fact, so far as my observation goes, it is among those removed from open and equal competition that hatred and jealousy are most rife. It may be maintained that competition, when not unjust or destructive, promotes a broader social feeling. The free and open play of energy and purpose is calculated to arouse precisely that knowledge of others, and of the limitations which their life imposes upon ours, out of which a wholesome sympathy and a sense of justice must spring. Competition involves contact and usually necessitates some degree of mutual comprehension. To succeed one must understand opposing forces, and understanding is the beginning of sympathy. As regards the feeling under the influences of which competition is carried on, any motive whatever may be a motive to competition, from the basest fear or rage up to the noblest love, emulation, or sense of duty. There is no special class of feelings or desires that is peculiarly competitive. All alike strive for success as they conceive it. To be a man is to compete. Vivere militare est. 358. COMPETITION AND LAISSEZ FAIRE NOT SYNONYMOUS1 In spite of the glaring weaknesses of the competitive system, and its undoubted waste of effort, it is the belief of the liberal school that it is the most effective system yet devised-that it secures the greatest efficiency in the whole industrial machine. This belief rests upon a few well-known principles which only need to be restated. In the first place, every individual of mature age and sound mind knows his own interest better than any set of public officials are likely to know it. In the second place, such an individual will, if left to himself, pursue his own interest more systematically and successfully than he Taken by permission from T. N. Carver, Essays in Social Justice, pp. 155–57. (Harvard University Press, 1915.) could if he were given his work and directed in it by any body of public officials. In the third place, if the public through its legal enactments and its executive and judicial officers effectively closes every opportunity by which such an individual could further his own interest in harmful or non-serviceable ways, he will then pursue his own interests in ways that are serviceable to the community. Finally, where every individual is left absolutely free to pursue his own interests in all ways that are serviceable, and where the degree of his well-being depends upon the amount of service which he performs, all will be spurred on by their own self-interest to render as much service as possible, and the whole community will then be served in the most effective manner possible, because all its members will be striving to serve one another in order to serve themselves. In applying this argument there are two things which need to be observed but which are frequently overlooked. In the first place, it is no argument in favor of laissez faire or the let-alone policy of government. On the contrary, it requires governmental interference with every non-serviceable line of activity which it is possible for the law to reach. In the second place, it is not a glorification of self-interest. It does not even involve in the slightest degree an approval of self-interest as a motive to action. In order to make this an argument for laissez faire, two additional assumptions are necessary: I, every individual is of mature age and sound mind; II, all human interests are harmonious. No advocate of laissez faire has ever made the first assumption. Therefore allowance has always been made for the need of public direction in the care of children and persons of unsound mind-in all cases, in fact, where it is evident that the individual does not know so well what is good for him as public officials do. But as the basis of the doctrine of laissez faire there has always been the assumption of a natural harmony of human interests. With this assumption, the argument reaches the finality of a syllogism. Major premise. Each individual of mature years and sound mind will pursue his own interests more energetically and intelligently when left to himself than when directed by any body of public officials. Minor premise. The interests of each individual harmonize with those of the rest of society. Conclusion. Each individual of mature years and sound mind will, if left to himself, work in harmony with the interests of the rest of society and work more energetically and intelligently than he would if directed by any body of public officials. 359. THE ENORMOUS DEMANDS UPON COMPETITION1 The intensity of competition varies: (1) with the degree of personal liberty; (2) with the rate of social change; (3) inversely as the efficiency of the selective agents. The freer the individual, the wider his field of choice in determining the social function, and the wider the field of choice, the more active must the selective process be in assigning him his place in it. Of a child born in British India, it can be predicted with some probability what and where he will be thirty years hence; but a child born in America may be anywhere or anything, almost, at the end of that time: no one would venture a guess. In the one case competition has little to do; in the other, everything. So with social change; unless it is mere decay, it involves new things to be done, new opportunities. For example, the electric industries, now employing hundreds of thousands of men, have arisen within a comparatively short time, and every man in them has found his place by competition. In an analogous manner the opening of new regions, like Oklahoma or the Klondike, the creation of an army such as took place at the outbreak of the Spanish War, the revelation of new fields of research, such as was made by the publication of the Origin of Species, are inevitably the occasion of a selective activity to determine who shall be the settlers, the miners, the military officers, the investigators, that the situation demands. As to selective agencies, an all-wise despot would undoubtedly be the most efficient; and it is conceivable that he might give to men a great deal of personal liberty and provide for any amount of social change without much increase in the intensity of competition. This being out of the question, a society striving to be free and progressive must do the best it can to achieve rational selections through its organization. By just laws, by a public sentiment appreciative of every sort of merit, and, most of all, by a system of education calculated to discover and develop the special capabilities of each individual, it can do much to make its choices prompt, intelligent, and just, and to avoid wasteful conflict. It is from this point of view that the existing state of things has been most effectively criticised; and writers who demand that competition be suppressed, usually mean that we ought to replace irrational and destructive contention by intelligent selection. Adapted by permission from C. H. Cooley, "Personal Competition," Economic Studies, IV, 85-91. (American Economic Association, 1899.) The three propositions that I have suggested indicate the social conditions of more or less intensified competition. To these should be added a condition that is rather biological or psychological, namely, the race traits of the people. An aggressive, ambitious, virile people, such as the Anglo-Saxon, German, or Irish, is naturally competitive. Each man wants a great deal, and has little dread of migration, hardship, uncertainty, or personal contention, to deter him from seeking it. An Englishman or a German will seize upon all the opportunities in sight and demand more, where an Italian or a Spaniard would perhaps make no use of those that are at hand. The principles above stated are sufficient to explain the fact, which seems to me unquestionable, that the present time is one when, among all progressive peoples, competition is far more intense than it has ever been in the past. They also explain why it is much more intense in some parts of those countries than in other parts. The first principle gives one reason for intense competitive activity in the United States; a consideration of the second will show how greatly this activity is stimulated by social change. The changes that this country is undergoing may be divided into two classes: those that are world-wide, which it shares with other countries that are in the current, and local changes incident to the development of a new country. The former have intensified competition everywhere, the latter give it a peculiar vigor and a special character among us. The thought of the industrial revolution and of the radical social changes of every sort that have grown out of it is so familiar that I do not care to dwell upon it. Not industry only, but family life, social relations, science, education, philosophy, and religion are in process of transformation as a result of this movement. In all these fields, though most consciously in industry-because that gives occupation to the vast majority of the people we have intenser activity, more striving, more success, and more failure, a constant breaking-up of settled relations. Great cities, which are incidental products of the new régime, are in all countries the foci of competition, and show most conspicuously its good and evil results. Populated by immigrants, tradition and status have little hold upon them, either for good or evil; their industries, their institutions, their social and moral conditions, are new and unregulated. To all this a new country adds the special series of changes incident to the passage of each part of it through those steps of development, from the rude agriculture of pioneers to the full maturity of manu |