n. We want a state of opinion in which the poor are not
objects to be slobbered over, but men to help in a manly struggle for
moral as well as material elevation. A great deal is said, for example,
about the evils of competition. It is remarkable indeed that few
proposals for improvement even, so far as I can discover, tend to get
rid of competition. Co-operation, as tradesmen will tell us, is not an
abolition of competition, but a competition of groups instead of units.
"Profit-sharing" is simply a plan by which workmen may take a direct
share in the competition carried on by their masters. I do not mention
this as any objection to such schemes, for I do not think that
competition is an evil. I do not doubt the vast utility of schemes
which tend to increase the intelligence and prudence of workmen, and
give them an insight into the conditions of successful business.
Competition is no doubt bad so far as it means cheating or gambling.
But competition is, it seems to me, inevitable so long as we are forced
to apply the experimental method in practical life, and I fail to see
what other method is available. Competition means that thousands of
people all over the world are trying to find out how they can supply
more economically and efficiently the wants of other people, and that
is a state of things to which I do not altogether object. Equality in
my sense implies that every one should be allowed to compete for every
place that he can fill. The cry is merely, as it seems to me, an
evasion of the fundamental difficulty. That difficulty is not that
people compete, but that there are too many competitors; not that a
man's seat at the table has to be decided by fair trial of his
abilities, but that there is not room enough to seat everybody. Malthus
brought to the front the great stumbling-block in the way of Utopian
optimism. His theory was stated too absolutely, and his view of the
remedy was undoubtedly crude. But he hit the real difficulty; and every
sensible observer of social evils admits that the great obstacle to
social improvement is that social residuum, the parasitic class, which
multiplies so as to keep down the standard of living, and turns to bad
purposes the increased power of man over nature. We have abolished
pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished
war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent
desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that grea