CHAPTER LXII THE COST OF COMPETITION

 

(Discusses the losses of friction¹ in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden.)

The United States government is by far the largest single business enterprise in the United States; and a study of congressional appropriations² in 1920, made by the United States Bureau of Standards, reveals the fact that ninety-three per cent of the total income of the government went to paying for past wars or preparing for future wars. We have shown that modern war is a product of the profit system, and if civilized³ nations would put their industry upon a co-operative basis, they could forget the very idea of war, and we should then receive fourteen times as much benefit from our government as we receive at present; we should have fourteen times as good roads, fourteen times as many schools, fourteen times as prompt a postoffice and fourteen times as efficient a Congress. What it would mean to industry to abolish war is something wholly beyond the power of our imagination to conceive; for along with ninety-three per cent of our government money there goes into military preparation the vast bulk of our intellectual energy and inventive genius, our moral and emotional equipment.

Next, strikes and the losses incidental to strikes, and the costs of preparing against strikes. This includes, not merely the actual loss of working time, it includes police and militia⁴, private armies of gunmen, and great secret service agencies, whose total income runs up into hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Industrial warfare⁵ is simply the method by which capitalists and workers determine the division of the product of industry; as if two men should co-operate in raising poultry⁶, and then fall to quarrelling over the ownership of the eggs, and settle the matter by throwing the eggs at each other's heads.

Next, bankruptcy⁷. Statistics show that regularly some ten per cent of our business enterprises fail every year. Take any block occupied by little business men, grocers and haberdashers and "notions," and you will see that they are always changing. Each change represents a human tragedy, and the total is a frightful⁸ waste of human energy; it happens because we can think of no better way to distribute goods than to go through the work of setting up a business, and then discover that it cannot succeed because the neighborhood is already overstocked with that kind of goods.

Next, fires which are a result of bankruptcy. You may laugh, perhaps, thinking that I am making a joke; but every little man who fails in business knows that he has a choice of going down in the social scale, or of setting fire to his stock some night, and having a big insurance company set him on his feet again. The result is that a certain percentage of bankrupts do regularly set fire to their stores. Some fifteen years ago there was published in "Collier's Weekly" a study of the costs to society of incendiary fires. The Fire Underwriters' Association estimated the amount as a quarter of a billion dollars a year; and all this cost, you understand, is paid out of the pockets of those who insure their homes and their stores, and do not burn them down.

From this follows the costs of insurance, and the whole insurance industry, which is inevitable⁹ under the profit system, but is entire waste so far as true production is concerned. Big enterprises like the Steel Trust do not carry insurance, and neither does the United States Postoffice. They are wealthy enough to stand their own losses. A national co-operative enterprise would be in the same position, and the whole business of collecting money for insurance and keeping records and carrying on lawsuits¹¹ would be forgotten.

Next, advertising¹². It would be no exaggeration to say that seventy per cent of the material published in American newspapers and magazines today is pure waste; and therefore seventy per cent of the labor¹³ of all the people who cut down forests and manufacture and transport paper and set up type and print and distribute publications is wasted. There is, of course, a small percentage of advertising that is useful, but most of it is boasting and falsehood, and even where it tells the truth it simply represents the effort of a merchant to persuade you to buy in his store instead of in a rival store—an achievement which is profitable to the merchant, but utterly¹⁴ useless to society as a whole.

This same statement applies to all traveling salesmen, and to a great percentage of middlemen. It applies also to a great part of delivery service. If you live in a crowded part of any city, you see a dozen milk wagons¹⁵ pass your door every morning, doing the work which could be done exactly as well by one. That is only one case out of a thousand I might name.

Next, crime. I have already discussed the crime of arson¹⁶, and I might discuss the crimes of pocket-picking, burglary, forgery¹⁷, and a hundred others in the same way. I am aware of the fact that there may be a few born criminals; there may be a few congenital cheats, whom we should have to put in hospitals. But we have only to consult the crime records, during the war and after the war, in order to see that when jobs are hunting men there are few criminals, and when men are hunting jobs there are many criminals. I have no figures as to the cost of administering justice in the United States—policemen, courts and jails—but it must be hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

I have discussed at great length the suppression of the productive power of society. I should not fail to mention the suppression of the inventive power of society, a factor less obvious, but probably in the long run even greater. Every one familiar with the inside of a big industry knows that hundreds and even thousands of useful processes are entirely¹⁸ suppressed, because it would not pay one particular concern to stand the expense of the changes involved. You know how, during the war, our government brought all the makers¹⁹ of engines together and perfected in triumph a "Liberty motor." But now we have gone back to private interest and competition, and each concern is jealously engaged in guarding its own secrets, and depriving industry as a whole of the benefit of everything that it learns. Each is spying upon the others, stealing the secrets of the others, stealing likewise from those who invent new ideas—and thus discouraging them from inventing any more.

I use this word "discourage," and I might write a chapter upon it. What human imagination can conceive the amount of social energy that is lost because of the factor of discouragement, directly caused by the competitive method? Who can figure what it means to human society that a great percentage of the people in it should be haunted by fear of one sort or another—the poor in fear of unemployment, sickness and starvation, the little business man in fear of bankruptcy and suicide, the big business man in fear of hard times and treachery of his competitors, the idle rich in fear of robbery and blackmail²⁰, and the whole community in fear of foreign war and domestic tumult²¹!

Anyone might go on and elaborate these factors that I have named, and think of scores of others. Anyone familiar with business life or with industrial processes would be able to put his finger on this or that enormous saving which he would be able to make if he and all his rivals could combine and come to an agreement. This has been proven over and over again in large-scale industry; it is the fact which has made of large-scale industry an overwhelming power, sucking all the profits to itself, reaching out and taking in new fields of human activity, and setting at naught²² all popular clamor and even legal terrors. How can anyone, seeing these facts, bring himself to deny that if we did systematize production and make it one enterprise, precisely²³ adapted to one end, we should enormously increase the results of human labor, and the benefit to all who do the world's work?

A good deal of this waste we can stop when we get ready, and other parts of it our bountiful mother nature will replace. When in a world war we kill some ten or twenty millions of the flower of our young manhood, we have only to wait several generations, and our race will be as good as ever. But, on the other hand, there is some waste that can never be repaired, and this is the thing truly frightful to contemplate²⁴. When we dig the iron ore out of the bowels²⁵ of the earth and rust¹⁰ it away in wars, we are doing something our race can never undo²⁶. And the same is true of many of our precious substances: phosphorus, sulphur, potash. When we cut down the forests from our mountain slopes, and lay bare the earth, we not merely cause floods and washouts, and silt²⁷ up our harbors, we take away from the surface of our land the precious life-giving soil, and make a habitable land into a desert, which no irrigating²⁸ and reforesting can ever completely restore. The Chinese have done that for many centuries, and we are following in their footsteps; more than six hundred million wagon-loads of our best soil are washed down to the sea every year! If you wish to know about these matters, I send you to a book, "On Board the Good Ship Earth," by Herbert Quick. It is one of the most heart-breaking books you ever read, yet it is merely a quiet statement of the facts about our present commercial anarchy²⁹.

1 friction   

n.摩擦，摩擦力

参考例句：

• When Joan returned to work,the friction between them increased.琼回来工作后，他们之间的摩擦加剧了。
• Friction acts on moving bodies and brings them to a stop.摩擦力作用于运动着的物体，并使其停止。

2 appropriations   

n.挪用（appropriation的复数形式）

参考例句：

• More commonly, funding controls are imposed in the annual appropriations process. 更普遍的作法是，拨款控制被规定在年度拨款手续中。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法
• Should the president veto the appropriations bill, it goes back to Congress. 假如总统否决了这项拨款提案，就把它退还给国会。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

3 civilized   

a.有教养的，文雅的

参考例句：

• Racism is abhorrent to a civilized society. 文明社会憎恶种族主义。
• rising crime in our so-called civilized societies 在我们所谓文明社会中日益增多的犯罪行为

4 militia   

n.民兵，民兵组织

参考例句：

• First came the PLA men,then the people's militia.人民解放军走在前面，其次是民兵。
• There's a building guarded by the local militia at the corner of the street.街道拐角处有一幢由当地民兵团守卫的大楼。

5 warfare   

n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突

参考例句：

• He addressed the audience on the subject of atomic warfare.他向听众演讲有关原子战争的问题。
• Their struggle consists mainly in peasant guerrilla warfare.他们的斗争主要是农民游击战。

6 poultry   

n.家禽，禽肉

参考例句：

• There is not much poultry in the shops. 商店里禽肉不太多。
• What do you feed the poultry on? 你们用什么饲料喂养家禽?

7 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

8 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

9 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

10 rust   

n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退

参考例句：

• She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
• The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。

11 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句

12 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

13 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

14 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

15 wagons   

n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车

参考例句：

• The wagons were hauled by horses. 那些货车是马拉的。
• They drew their wagons into a laager and set up camp. 他们把马车围成一圈扎起营地。

16 arson   

n.纵火，放火

参考例句：

• He was serving a ten spot for arson.他因纵火罪在服十年徒刑。
• He was arraigned on a charge of arson.他因被指控犯纵火罪而被传讯。

17 forgery   

n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为）

参考例句：

• The painting was a forgery.这张画是赝品。
• He was sent to prison for forgery.他因伪造罪而被关进监狱。

18 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

19 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 blackmail   

n.讹诈，敲诈，勒索，胁迫，恫吓

参考例句：

• She demanded ＄1000 blackmail from him.她向他敲诈了1000美元。
• The journalist used blackmail to make the lawyer give him the documents.记者讹诈那名律师交给他文件。

21 tumult   

n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹

参考例句：

• The tumult in the streets awakened everyone in the house.街上的喧哗吵醒了屋子里的每一个人。
• His voice disappeared under growing tumult.他的声音消失在越来越响的喧哗声中。

22 naught   

n.无，零 [=nought]

参考例句：

• He sets at naught every convention of society.他轻视所有的社会习俗。
• I hope that all your efforts won't go for naught.我希望你的努力不会毫无结果。

23 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

24 contemplate   

vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视

参考例句：

• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate.战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。
• The consequences would be too ghastly to contemplate.后果不堪设想。

25 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

26 undo   

vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销

参考例句：

• His pride will undo him some day.他的傲慢总有一天会毁了他。
• I managed secretly to undo a corner of the parcel.我悄悄地设法解开了包裹的一角。

27 silt   

n.淤泥，淤沙，粉砂层，泥沙层；vt.使淤塞；vi.被淤塞

参考例句：

• The lake was almost solid with silt and vegetation.湖里几乎快被淤泥和植物填满了。
• During the annual floods the river deposits its silt on the fields.每年河水泛滥时都会在田野上沉积一层淤泥。

28 irrigating   

灌溉( irrigate的现在分词 )； 冲洗（伤口）

参考例句：

• Derrick and I have been laying out the system of irrigating ditches. 德里克跟我在一起修建那个灌溉网。
• He had been in command at the irrigating ditch the day before. 上一天，在灌溉渠边，是他担任指挥的。

29 anarchy   

n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• There would be anarchy if we had no police.要是没有警察，社会就会无法无天。
• The country was thrown into a state of anarchy.这国家那时一下子陷入无政府状态。