, wages went
up without a struggle owing to the fact that one employer would try to
outbid another. In other words, temporarily, the natural, "tacit
combination" of the employers, to keep down wages, sometimes broke
down.

Competition was called "the life of trade" in those days, and in a
sense it was so. Under its mighty urge, new continents were explored
and developed and brought within the circle of civilization. Sometimes
this was done by means of brutal and bloody wars, for capitalism is
never particular about the methods it adopts. To get profits is its
only concern, and though its shekels "sweat blood and dirt," to adapt
a celebrated phrase of Karl Marx, nobody cares. Under stress of
competition, also, the development of mechanical production went on
at a terrific pace; navigation was developed, so that the ocean became
as a common highway.

In short, Jonathan, it is no wonder that men sang the praises of
competition, that some of the greatest thinkers of the time looked
upon competition as something sacred. Even the workers, seeing that
they got higher wages when the keen and fierce competition created an
excessive demand for labor, joined in the adoration of competition as
a principle--but among themselves, in their struggles for better
conditions, they avoided competition as much as possible and combined.
Their instincts as wage-earners made them keen to see the folly of
division and competition among themselves.

So competition, considered in connection with the evolution of
society, had many good features. The competitive period was just as
"good" as any other period in history and no more "wicked" than any
other period.

But there was another side to the shield. As the competitive struggle
among individual capitalists went on the weakest were crushed to the
wall and fell down into the ranks of the wage workers. There was no
system in production. Word came to the commercial world that there was
a great market for certain manufactures in a foreign land and at once
hundreds and even thousands of factories were worked to their utmost
limit to meet that demand. The result was that in a little while the
thing was overdone: there was a glut in the market, often attended by
panic, stagnation and disaster. Rathbone Greg summed up the evils of
competition in the following words:

"Competition gluts our markets, enables the rich to take advantage of
the necessity of the poor, makes each man snatch the bread out