competition between them is so moderate that we
hardly remember that it exists. It is difficult to see how there could
be any waste from this competition among buyers, at least of any amount.
Expressed in the language of the laws we have found: The number of
competing units is so great that competition is neither intense nor
wasteful.

From these two laws and a study of the examples we have given, it is
easy to deduce a third. We have seen that when competition became very
wasteful, monopoly arose; indeed, we have noted the working of this law
all through our investigation. The principal cause assigned for the
formation of the linseed-oil trust was the waste which intense
competition had caused. The third law is, then: _In any given industry
the tendency toward the death of competition (monopoly) varies directly
with the waste due to competition._

We might now combine these three laws to deduce the fourth law, which
is: _In any given industry the tendency toward the death of competition
(monopoly) varies inversely with the number of competing units._ But
this law is also proved independently. Look back over all the monopolies
we have studied, and it will be seen that one of the most important
conditions of their success was the small number of competitors. Fifty
men could be brought together and organized, and made to bury their
feuds and rivalries, when with a thousand the combination would have
been impossible. We have seen, in the case of the farmers, how their
great number alone has prevented them from forming combinations to
restrict the competition among themselves.

It should be said that these laws, like all other laws of economics,
are not to be taken in a narrow mathematical sense. We cannot study
causes and effects dependent on the caprice of men's desires and wills
with the minute exactness with which we solve numerical problems. Taken
in the broad sense, however, the study we have made in the preceding
chapters is sufficient proof of their truth.

The common expressions of trade afford still further evidence. We often
hear the expression: "A healthy competition." But the very existence of
the phrase implies that there may be an unhealthy competition, and if
so, what is it? Is it not that competition whose intensity is so great
that it causes a large waste of capital and labor in work other than
production; whose intensity is so great that, like an animal or a
machine working under too great a load, it