p. 83My Dear Mr. Blatchford,
I do not quite like the way you talk in your 16th letter. You talk forcibly and picturesquely, as you do all through your book; but you offend my sense of justice by saying things that are not true, and my sense of symmetry by using illustrations that are not applicable, and my sense of logical fitness by drawing conclusions that are not warranted by the argument. You do it all in such a rushing way and with such a wealth of elegant diction that most readers are liable to be carried away.
Now, I am not going to be carried away. You abuse me a good deal in the course of this letter. You say I am “rather slow, John,” that I “fall into stupid error, partly because I have not very clear sight nor very clear brains”; that I “cannot grasp a new idea”; that, in fact, my theory is “rank blockheadism.”
I don’t find fault with you for expressing your opinion in this vigorous manner, but it makes me “stop and think.” It stirs what I suppose every man of character has a little of—a certain amount of mere donkey that refuses to be dragooned into even the right road—a good serviceable Anglo-Saxon quality. If I am touched a little, it helps me to look all round your flaming sentences, and see if I really am the stupid and benighted creature you have written so many clever letters to enlighten. The result is entirely satisfactory. I do not say I make out the dulness to be on your side. You are far from dull. You are bright and nimble as the airiest waterfowl. But people are often bright and nimble that are not exactly accurate and reliable.
p. 84 You say the theory of competition is “the most fatuous and bestial of all senseless and brutal theories that practical men support.” The ardour of this declaration can be excused if we consider it as inspired by the horror attendant on the abuse of competition, but it is impossible in the calm exercise of reason to receive it as a statement of fact.
You say much in the early part of your book about laws of nature and facts of nature. Now, it is a law of nature that you cannot extinguish the desire to excel, the impulse to be first. Like every other law of nature, it is destructive working by itself. But, in its place, it is a most helpful element in the human constitution. It acts as a valuable check to the mere inertia that would hold life in stagnation; and contributes a valuable share to the activities that lead to development and improvement. If you will examine history, whether in books or in the scenes of life enacted before our eyes, you will find that all men who have borne a useful part in public life are actuated in measure by this feeling of emulation. It is the impulse known as ambition when acting nakedly. It is a pity when it acts nakedly or out of combination with the higher sentiments, but still, even in its naked action, it leads to many good things being done that would be left undone if it were not there.
But you propose to go dead against it, and to exclude its action altogether. In this, you are not scientific. A scientific man allows for all the conditions of his problem. You are going to put yourself in opposition to one of the most palpable and powerful. Human nature, as it is now constituted, works by rivalry.
I don’t say solely, but largely, and whatever may be said about the evils of competition, it remains true that the world benefits by the rivalry of individuals, and that if this element were excluded, social life would stagnate and wither.
You do not put the case correctly when you say that it means war. Rivalry is not necessarily war, though it may lead to war if not regulated. A man through rivalry may shoot ahead and get more money than his neighbour, and yet not hate or afflict him. Nay, it may put in his hand the power of blessing him. If he is properly subject to the law prescribed for human nature by the Contriver of human nature, he will make this use of power which rivalry may place in his hand. Rivalry is good and not bad when working in the right way; it becomes bad only when out of the p. 85 right association, like oxygen, which preserves life when mixed with other gases, but kills when separated.
What would you say, Mr. Blatchford, to a man who, after witnessing a chemical demonstration of the destructive character of naked oxygen, should ever afterwards swear at oxygen, and propose its exclusion from all air that human beings should ever breathe. Out of your strong vocabulary, you would find some suitable names for him, I have no doubt. This is what you appear to me to do in the matter of competition. Because it works disastrously by itself, you declare war against it in every connection. This is absurd. You say, “It means that a nation where every man tries to get the better of his neighbour will be happier and wealthier and more prosperous and more enlightened than a nation where every man tries to help his neighbour.” This is not a true statement of the case. It means that a nation where every man tries to do the best for himself, and at the same time is kind and helpful to his neighbour, will be better off and happier than a nation where through the sloth that reigns in the absence of emulation, every man is unable to help his neighbour, though very sentimentally inclined.
Your illustrations are very cleverly put, but they do not support your contention at all. The case of two men trying to get a cart up the hill, one pushing it up and the other pushing it down, does not illustrate competition. Competition would be illustrated by two carts and two men, each cart with a man behind it and £5 offered to the man who should get his cart to the top of the hill first. It is very certain that both carts would be up the hill sooner under that arrangement than one cart with both men behind it.
So, with catching the colt, each man trying to prevent others from catching it would not illustrate competition. Let us have two colts and two men, with a reward to the man who should catch his colt first, and we should have a quicker catch.
As for the navigating of a steam boat, that does not apply at all. Granted, the vessel would never get to harbour if all the crew scrambled for the steersmanship. The argument in that case would be good for organisation; it would not be against competition. Set each man to his post, certainly; all the world will agree p. 86 to this. But even here competition comes in. The best posts will be given to the men who fill them best, and you then get the best men by competition.
Your illustration of the hundred loaves to be scrambled for by a hundred men, looks a little more relevant, but it is not really so when examined. It illustrates a wrong system of division merely. It has nothing to do with the best and quickest method of getting the loaves made, which is the strong point.
You would have to suppose the question of making the hundred loaves put to the hundred men, as to which of them would get the hundred loaves ready quickest, the man who would do it quickest to get the job.
You would certainly get them ready more quickly by this plan than by leaving each man to get ready his own loaf.
When the theory of competition is stated correctly, it loses much of its odiousness. No doubt it is an evil thing in certain developments; but the evil is not inherent, it comes from the absence of regulation. The total abolition of competition would be a greater evil than all the evil we suffer from its abuse. It would consign mankind to lethargy and death. Monopolies, as you admit, always serve the public worse than competitions.
You prefer to call your system co-operation, and not monopoly. Co-operation is a finer name, but it would not alter the thing. The thing would be monopoly—monopoly for a different reason perhaps, but still monopoly; nobody else would be allowed to do the work. And with human nature such as it is, such a system could not fail to work detrimentally. In the absence of rivalry, the coach would go at a very deliberate pace.
Some things, no doubt, the State could work better than private enterprise, railways, and perhaps coal mines; but when you propose to allow the State to take charge of our private business, you are crossing the line where service ends and tyranny begins.
The State monopoly of the postal and telegraph departments works well, but not by excluding competition; you must remember that there is competition within the service. The best men are put into the best places, and every man knows that if he does not look sharp, he will have his place and his bread taken by others. If all p. 87 the men were sure of their berths as you propose to make every man sure of his bread, you would soon see a different state of things.
You seem to make a point when you object to competition on the score of its increasing the expense of distribution by employing a multiplicity of firms and appliances; but there is nothing in it, Mr. Blatchford, when a sufficiently wide view is taken. Human life is not to be decided from a merely arithmetical point of view. Life cannot be conducted with a view to statistics. You must remember that life is made up of many picturesque details and healthful activities, which you would destroy by turning it into a single concern. Though it might cheapen the business, it would not necessarily be a benefit to have the public standing by seeing their business done for them. I once proposed to my wife to pay her domestic accounts so as to save her the trouble. She said:
“Oh, but I like to do it; it gives me something to go out for, it gives me a pleasant variety of occupation.” I saw the point, and it bears on the problem before us. The subdivision of business, as the result of rivalry, gives variety of occupation, colour, picturesqueness, and spice to life. To run it as one concern might save the cost of much book-keeping, and travelling and canvassing, but it would also save (or destroy) a good many other things that people are the better to have. Your new social system would be too grim: your arguments look too much to one side of the subject.
The way in which you propose to deal with inventions shows how badly it would work. You propose that all inventions should be handed over to the State, and that the inventors should be content with a medal, or the attachment of their name to their inventions. How many inventors would invent under these conditions? You must make allowance for the motives by which men are actuated in this matter. Where one or two invent from the love of it, a hundred invent under the stimulus supplied either by the pressure of want, or the desire to get money for use.
You say the inventor under your system, being made sure of food and clothing and leisure, would have as much of essential things as he requires. “Requires!” Would he have as much as he desires? Desire is a far more powerful element in human nature than requirement. Are you to leave it out of the account?
p. 88 You say he could not spend more money if he got it; this is not intelligible, unless you propose to prevent people spending money according to their own desires and ideas, which I suppose you do, and which I must say is absurd and monstrous and impracticable.
You say he would have no necessity to think of the future, that his wife and children would be sure of the care of the State:—quite so; all incentive taken away; for what incentive acts with a man so powerfully as providing for his wife and children?
You think we require a new reading of the proverbs to harmonise with the system of competition. The suggestion is ingenious, and you work it out prettily. But the effort is a failure when rightly looked into. Truly, union is strength; but a society in which every man is at liberty to do the best he can for himself, blended with the precautions and regulations which would prevent the liberty from working harm, would be a stronger society than one in which no man would be allowed to get more power into his hands than his neighbour, from a theoretical fear of his abusing it. In the one case, individual benevolences would be fountains of blessing; in the other, all the fountains would be stopped, and good men, as well as bad, reduced to the condition of dry wells.
Union is strength, but it must be union reasonably applied, otherwise union may be weakness itself. If you tied twelve men together with ropes, this would be union, but I fancy there would not come much strength out of it. There are other ways of tying men together to their hurt. If a community is too much taken care of, it will become debilitated. The eagles push their young out of the nests. Men have often to be pushed away from home, and thrown upon their own resources, to be fully brought out. If they are looked after all the while, they remain undeveloped. It is well for people to be compelled to look after themselves. This is not a house divided against itself, but a house building itself on the principles of a true masonry, that will stand the breeze.
Then you propose to make the proverb read, “It is better to make one enemy than a hundred friends.” Well, even this might have its application. All friends and no enemies might suffocate. p. 89 It is better to have an enemy who will tone you up and put you on your mettle.
Then you would have the new reading, “The greatest good for the smallest number”; nobody will own to this, of course. The good of all is the true motto, but how is this to be achieved? This is the question. Not by coddling everybody, but by giving everybody an opportunity of developing good for themselves, which involves a degree of rivalry. Rivalry is wholesome when it is not carried too far.
Your aims are excellent, Mr. Blatchford, but your proposals are not all suited to their accomplishment. The management of human society is a delicate problem requiring the adjustment of many apparently conflicting principles, like the counter-working parts of a highly-finished engine. Some of these principles you see clearly; others you see only dimly. Under the ardour of philanthropic impulses, you would make the mistake of leaving out some, to the destruction of the whole machine. I fervently pray that you and your Socialistic brethren may never have the opportunity of making the disastrous experiment.
Your anxious and “slow,” yet hopeful friend,
JOHN SMITH.