beat down prices, nor did they devote so large a
proportion of their time, thought, and money to devices for taking
away one another's customers.[124] From the new business this personal
element and these customary scruples have almost entirely vanished,
and as the net advantages of large-scale production grow, more and
more attention is devoted to the direct work of competition. Hence we
find that it is precisely in those trades which are most highly
organised, provided with the most advanced machinery, and composed of
the largest units of capital, that the fiercest and most unscrupulous
competition has shown itself. The precise part which machinery, with
its incalculable tendency to over-production, has played in this
competition remains for later consideration. Here it is enough to
place in evidence the acknowledged fact that the growing scale of the
business has intensified and not diminished competition. In the great
machine industries trade fluctuations are most severely felt; the
smaller businesses are unable to stand before the tide of depression
and collapse, or are driven in self-defence to coalesce. The borrowing
of capital, the formation of joint-stock enterprise and every form of
co-operation in capital has proceeded most rapidly in the textile,
metal, transport, shipping, and machine-making industries, and in
those minor manufactures, such as brewing and chemicals, which require
large quantities of expensive plant. This joining together of small
capitals to make a single large capital, this swallowing up of small
by large businesses, means nothing else than the endeavour to escape
the risks and dangers attending small-scale production in the tide of
modern industrial changes. But since all are moving in the same
direction, no one gains upon the other. Certain common economies are
shared by the monster competitors, but more and more energy must be
given to the work of competition, and the productive economies are
partly squandered in the friction of fierce competition, and partly
pass over to the body of consumers in lowered prices. Thus the
endeavour to secure safety and high profits by the economies of
large-scale production is rendered futile by the growing severity of
the competitive process. Each big firm finds itself competent to
undertake more business than it already possesses, and underbids its
neighbour until the cutting of prices has sunk the weaker and driven
profits to a bare subsistence point f