honor, friendship, or justice, then competition is likely to be ruthless and destructive. When men care more for offices, the immediate prizes of political competition, than for the welfare of the country or the peace of the neighborhood, a political campaign is likely to become a ruthless and destructive game. And when football men care more for victory than for sport or honor, football becomes a game unfit for gentlemen. In all these cases the evil does not inhere in competition itself but in the false system of valuations in the minds of the competitors. So long as business men realize that there are other things more precious than money, so long as politicians realize that there are other things more important than winning offices, so long as football men realize that there are other things greater than victory, all these forms of competition are thoroughly compatible with the most sincere friendship.

It has been pointed out many times that the struggle for the life of others is just as real a fact in life as the struggle for the life of self, that mutual aid is as real as mutual antagonism, and that coöperation has a place in our economic system as well as competition. All this is true, but it must not be allowed to obscure the fact that competition is a very real thing also. Behind these apparent contradictions lies the very important fact that human interests are sometimes harmonious and sometimes antagonistic,-that they are never wholly one or the other. Where the interests of men harmonize there is and always will be coöperation, provided they are wise enough to understand it; where their interests conflict, there is and always will be competition.

Coöperation a form of competition. Even coöperation, as it is generally practiced, is only a method of competing more effectively. There is coöperation among the members of an athletic team. Their teamwork consists in working together smoothly and effectively; but the purpose of this teamwork, or coöperation, is to enable them to compete more effectively against the opposing team. It would be difficult to find or to name an instance of coöperation which did not, directly or

indirectly, enable the coöperators to compete more successfully than they were able to do when working alone as individuals. It is really the principle of teamwork applied to business competition. Within the coöperating group, as within the athletic team, competition among members is reduced. But competition between coöperating groups, or between the group and those outside the group, is quite as sharp as it would be if there were no coöperative groups. Again, when a coöperative group becomes large, there arises within the group a certain amount of competition for offices and other advantages.

Coöperation is an excellent thing under certain conditions, and wherever the conditions call for it every reasonable effort should be made to encourage it, but the encouragement should be given with a full understanding of its limitations and of its real relation to the competitive process. More coöperative societies have failed than have succeeded. One of the principal reasons for failure has been that the promoters have imagined that there was in coöperation something inherently superior to competition and that it ought to be substituted for competition anywhere and everywhere. The truth seems to be that coöperation is called for only under certain special conditions where teamwork is required in order to secure large results.

Where coöperation is successful. A careful study of coöperation will show that it has seldom succeeded in the field of production. Its chief successes have been achieved in merchandising; that is, in buying and selling. Except among a few religious societies, which are held together by a powerful religious sentiment, the author does not know of a single case where coöperative farming has succeeded. By coöperative farming is meant the running of the productive work of growing crops under a coöperative system. There are many cases, however, in which groups of farmers have coöperated in buying and selling, in marketing their products, in purchasing their supplies, and in securing capital on advantageous terms. There are also many cases in which they have coöperated in running

creameries, cheese factories, and grain elevators. These are parts of their marketing system. Again, it must be remembered that the farmers do not themselves operate these establishments. They own them and they furnish the capital to run them, but they hire others to manage them and to do the work. The men who work in these establishments are not coöperators, but receive wages and salaries precisely as they would if the establishments were owned by private individuals.

Two fields for business competition. There is a fundamental reason why coöperative enterprises have not flourished in the field of production as often as they have in the field of buying and selling. This reason is found in the two kinds of business competition,-competitive production and competitive bargaining. Competitive production always works well; competitive bargaining sometimes works well and sometimes works badly. Since competitive production always works well, the need for coöperative production is never sufficient to justify its existence. No one has a sufficiently strong motive to induce him to give his time and energy to the running of a coöperative society in the field of production. Since there are no evils connected with competitive production, there is not enough to be gained by coöperative production to lead anyone to sacrifice his time and effort in order to make it succeed.

In the field of competitive bargaining, however, evils frequently spring up. Where a small and compact body of dealers are buying from a large and widely scattered body of producers, the latter are at a great disadvantage in the bargaining process. Where this is the case it is necessary for the producers to get together in a coöperative organization in order to bargain on equal terms with the dealers. Where there is such a need as this someone will have a motive that is sufficiently strong to induce him to give his time and attention, to sit up nights, to labor in season and out of season, to keep the coöperative society together and make it succeed. Without some such motive as this, coöperation has seldom or never succeeded.

Competitive consumption. There is another kind of competition which always works badly. It is even worse than competitive bargaining. It may be called competitive consumption. By competitive consumption is meant a rivalry in display, in ostentation, in the effort to outshine or to outdress all one's neighbors, or at least not to be outshone or outdressed by them. This is not business competition, however, though it can be called a kind of economic competition.

From what has been said it will appear that economic competition is not synonymous with the productive methods of struggling for existence as outlined in the beginning of this chapter. There is such a thing, it is true, as competitive production; but competitive bargaining is partly persuasive and partly deceptive. It is persuasive when it takes the form of clever advertising, of expert salesmanship, or of shrewd and reasonably honest bargaining; it is deceptive when cleverness in advertising takes the form of artistic lying (of overstating the merits of an article advertised) or when expert salesmanship takes the same form. Competitive consumption has no productive features about it. The effort to keep up appearances, to dress better than one can afford, to spend money for purposes of display, are all deceptive, besides being wasteful and to that extent destructive. These, however, are among the more refined and less repulsive forms of destruction. For this reason, perhaps, neither law nor public sentiment has condemned them very definitely as yet.

In what fields coöperation may succeed. They who are interested in promoting coöperation should bear all this in mind. It is a waste of time and energy to try to substitute coöperation for competition in all cases. In the first place, it cannot be done, because so long as people prefer themselves and those who are near them to others who are farther from them, competition in some form will exist. In the second place, even if coöperation could be substituted for competition, it would be undesirable in many cases, though desirable in others; that is to say, there are some cases in which competition works so

well that coöperation could not improve upon it. To be more specific, competitive production, as stated before, always works well. No one has yet succeeded in making coöperation in production, either on a large scale or on a small scale, work successfully for a long period of time. This is not saying that producers may not occasionally coöperate, as when farmers help one another in special lines of work. In our rural communities, especially in previous generations, there were many barn raisings, log rollings, corn huskings, and other examples of genuine and beneficial coöperation. But these events were only incidents in a kind of life which remained, in spite of them, predominantly competitive. Even competitive bargaining sometimes works well. Where this is the case nothing is to be gained by coöperation, and it is therefore certain to fail, because the coöperators will, sooner or later, lose their enthusiasm when they see that they are not gaining anything by it; that is, when they see that it is not working any better than competition. The would-be coöperators should choose for their field of effort some situation where competitive bargaining is working badly. There they will have a chance of success. But no coöperative scheme runs itself. Even where there is a distinct and undoubted need for it, it will succeed only when some capable person gives a great deal of time and study and hard work to it.

Compulsion versus voluntary agreement. With an unerring instinct for economic falsehood a certain class of writers have persistently obscured this question of coöperation versus competition by confusing it with working under compulsion versus working under freedom of contract. The Panama Canal was not built coöperatively. The government of the United States decided to hire others to do it instead of bargaining with contractors. They who did the work did not coöperate, any more than the men who build our railroads and factories or work on our streets. If a large number of farmers unite to run a creamery or a shoe factory of their own, but do not work in it themselves, they sometimes call it a coöperative creamery or shoe factory. In reality it is only quasi coöperative. The