CHAPTER III

COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION

Co-operation as Old as the World

Human nature has a short memory and therefore is prone to brand as "newfangled" some things that are as old as the hills and as solid. That is the way some people look at co-operation. They and their fathers and grandfathers have viewed business solely from the angle of unchecked, destructive competition, and it is impossible for them to realize that co-operation rather than destructive competition is the law of life.

Competition when unchecked is bad and in the long run self-destructive. Modern civilization has decided that certain bounds, restraints, rules of the game, must be set and respected. But competition thus controlled implies-even necessitates a considerable degree of co-operation, even among persons or agencies whose interests are directly competitive.

In the Animal World

Animate nature when superficially examined appears like an immense battlefield where nothing is to be seen but destruction. Birds of prey hunt gulls, gulls feed on fish, fish devour smaller fish; thus goes on the struggle for existence. But deeper knowledge of animals and plants reveals equally the relation of mutual aid, or co-operation.

The bees have many enemies; their honey has many ruthless admirers in animals of every sort from the beetle and bear up to man. Yet, by working in common, these industrious little creatures multiply their individual forces; by resorting to a temporary division of labor combined with the

capacity of each bee to perform every kind of work when required, they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as no isolated animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well armed it may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than highly developed man when he fails to take advantage of well-planned mutual assistance.

In the case of the ants, as Forel has pointed out, the fundamental feature of life in many species is the obligation to follow co-operation. An ant-hill, superior in relative size to much that man has accomplished, with its paved roads, vaulted galleries, spacious halls and granaries, harvesting and "malting" of grain, rational methods of nursing the eggs and larvae, building special nests for rearing the aphides which Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; is one of the finest examples in nature of mutual aid and the beneficent results which follow.

In these exceptional instances the co-operation found in the animal world is continuous and elaborate. There are numberless cases, however, with animals of widely varying types, of partial and temporary co-operation to attain specific objects. The birds slowly move southward as the winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and undertake long journeys. Many rodents gather in large villages in order to obtain the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the continent migrate toward the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find food. Beavers, when they grow numerous on a river, divide their settlement into two parts and go, the old ones down-stream and the young ones upstream, thus avoiding competition.

Work for Existence

What we think of as the struggle for existence in the animal world might be described more truthfully as the law

of work for existence. Self-preservation demands constant effort. No living being may with impunity neglect work. But the law of nature which enjoins work for self-preservation can be fulfilled in a better way than by destructive competition with other individuals. In the great struggle for life-for the greatest possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of energy-natural selection continually seeks out ways for avoiding destructive competition as much as possible.

Many animals store food or fall asleep as the season comes when destructive competition, or struggle for existence, should set in. And when animals can neither fall asleep nor migrate, nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do what the titmouse does, as Wallace in "Darwinism," Chapter V, has so charmingly described: they resort to new kinds of food and thus avoid competition. Kuropatkin made a study of actual struggle for existence among animals in the severe regions of northern Asia. The animals which emerged alive from the ordeal were "impoverished in vigor and health." From this he reached the conclusion that no progressive evolution of the species can be soundly based upon periods of keen and destructive competition.

The teaching of nature, in fact, from the forest, the bush, the river, and the ocean, is that competition without co-operation is destructive and fatal; co-operation in some form or other is undoubtedly the surest means for giving to each and all the greatest safety, the best guaranty of real prog

ress.

It is by following this lesson that man has reached the position upon which he now stands socially and industrially. Every human being is a member of society, and society has come to be what it is only by mutual aid among its members. As soon as a member of society wages war upon his fellowmembers society itself is brought into a state of confusion.

The disorder which thus arises is harmful to all its members as well as to the one who started the trouble. The interests of the individual, accordingly, compel him to avoid strife where it is possible and instead to seek safety in mutual aid or co-operation.

The New Attitude of Business

In the minds of those familiar with present economic evolution and development in the business world, there is no question that co-operation is being recognized more and more as fundamental. In economic life, as in the life of nature, men have been discovering through experience that it pays to work together.

The modern trade association is one result of the business world's realization that unrestricted competition is unnatural and fallacious and that constructive, intelligent competition, together with studied co-operation, is not only desirable but essential to industrial welfare. Men have long supposed, as shown in the preceding chapters, that competition was the life-blood of trade and that it was necessary to be piratical and heartless to succeed. Now it is recognized that competition is simply a tonic, whereas the life-blood of trade is co-operation. The old conception was that industrial success was built on the failure of others; the new conception is that every failure in an industry is felt disadvantageously by every member of that industry and by the consumer as well, and that the temporary profits enjoyed by the victor generally cannot offset the damage and retrogression suffered by the industry as a whole.

Destructive Competition-Lower Standards

Experience shows that unrestricted competition produces far more harm than good. Business men should match their wits and skill in order to produce better goods and sell them

for less money, but when a man is working as an individualist without appreciating his inevitable relation to others he naturally thinks his own thoughts and becomes selfish. He is apt to have his broader vision obscured by immediate and petty inclinations. Too often the result is that in order to win, that is to lessen the cost of production and thereby to be able to quote lower prices, he makes himself liable to charges of short weight, poor workmanship, adulteration, or substitution.

Abstractly this man would admit that any one of these practices is wrong and injures his business irreparably. But the constant strain of destructive competition so wears down his business standards and his sense of ethical values that eventually he finds, or other people find, that he is engaging in practices which in the beginning he would have condemned most severely.

Eventually every manufacturer under vicious competition must feel the effect of such warfare. A few years ago in a certain industry there was a three-cornered fight between the manufacturers of a certain article. One of the factors. had large capital behind it and endeavored to eliminate the other two, but in the process of elimination the quality and service as given by each was so inferior that the public rebelled and refused to purchase the article at all and the industry nearly went to pieces. After this the fight was discontinued and the three factors agreed to stop their destructive practices. It took the industry several years to win back the confidence and good-will of its former customers. This instance of destructive competition lost the industry millions of dollars and did no earthly good because the effort was entirely selfish and contrary to fundamental economic and natural laws.

It is wrong to name lower and still lower prices until profits dwindle and disappear and goods are sold at or below