COMPETITION (Lat. a seeking together) has been well defined by Dr. Johnson as "the act of endeavoring to gain what another endeavors to gain at the same time." Its most apt exemplification is a race, where all are going to the same point, and all strive to be first there, while though only one can achieve this object, some others will have the satisfaction of being nearer to success than the competitors who are behind them. The most important practical use of the word C. is in the political economy of commerce, where it is the great motive-power of production and enterprise. Peo ple work, or embark in trade, avowedly for the purpose of making money. It is the object of the law of the land, as well as of religion and morality, to prevent money making by immoral means; but within the bounds thus drawn around it, money making is the object of man's exertion. When the money is made, the next point, always within the same bounds, is to make it go as far as it will. C. works through the co-operation of these motives. The purchaser wants the best article he can get at the lowest price; the producer strives to beat all his fellows, and offer the best article for the price. So thoroughly is this principle established as one consistent with commercial morality and honor, that our railway companies, managed by men of rank and fortune, many of whom are members of the legislature, do not hesitate to make travelers pay a larger fare for going 20 m. on their line to a station not touched by a rival company, than they will charge the same passenger for a journey of 40 or 50 m., if it be to a station which be could reach otherwise.
Whatever may be hereafter accomplished, what we chiefly know of the attempts to supersede C. by some other motive to exertion, is, that they have not been successful. We see every day C. increasing the necessaries and comforts of life, and enlarging the wealth of the community. It is said that there are other and better which should produce the same effect, but they have not yet been found. It was an object of the ruling party in the French provisional government of 1848 to abolish C., and place all workmen on a par, as some expressed it, or, according to others, to remu nerate them, not according to their services, but according to their wants. A great experiment was tried at the hotel Clichy, where 1500 tailors were employed to make the uniforms for the national guards, the price of which was to be equally divided among the workmen; but even in that climax of enthusiasm, they did not work up to the mark of the lowest paid of the Paris tailors under the competitive system. As
each one felt that the value of any extra exertion would be divided among the whole 1500, instead of being enjoyed by himself, his zeal relaxed, and even the thought of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" was insufficient to rouse it. It appears wonderful that large bodies of the French people should have been so easily deceived by state ments of which the fallacy, or rather the actual inaccuracy, would be at once seen through by any working-man in this country. Louis Blanc supposes three competitors for a job. A has a wife and family; he wants 3 francs of wages. B has a wife only; 24- francs will do with him. But C is a bachelor, who can subsist on 2 francs; there fore, he gets the job, and the others starve. See the second chapter of his Organization du Travail, the title of which is " Competition is for the People a System of Exter mination." But he leaves out entirely one side of the bargain. Employers compete to get work as much as workmen compete for employment. If the work of B and C be worth, in the market, 3 francs, they will get that whether they have families or not; and it is not the practice of a working-man, any more than of the rest of the human species, to give his work at a third less than its value because he is a bachelor. The Socialists have referred to the public departments—especially to the post-office arrange ments in Britain—for instances of services performed without competition. There is, however, in reality, much C. in all the government departments. Although trades men may not endeavor to undersell each other by making goods and offering them to the government, yet they endeavor to undersell each other by offering to undertake con tracts at the lowest price. Doubtless, the practice of entering on government contracts is open to abuse, if the officers who look after them are careless, and neglect the detec tion of fraud or inefficiency. But the service of government by contract may be made as effective as any other kind of competition.