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more stupid than the stupid workmen of England. And while you maunder about
restoring competition, the trusts go on destroying you.
'One and all you tell the same story the passing away of competition and the
coming on of combination. You, Mr Owen, destroyed competition here in Berkeley
when your branch store drove the three small groceries out of business. Your
combination was more effective. Yet you feel the pressure of other
combinations on you, the trust combinations, and you cry out. It is because
you are not a trust. If you were a grocery trust for the whole United States,
you would be singing another song. And the song would be, "Blessed are the
trusts." And yet again, not only is your small combination not a trust, but
you are aware yourself of its lack of strength. You are beginning to divine
your own end. You feel yourself and your branch stores a pawn in the game. You
see the powerful interests rising and growing more powerful day by day; you
feel their mailed hands descending upon your profits and taking a pinch here
and a pinch there the railroad trust, the oil trust, the steel trust, the coal
trust; and you know that in the end they will destroy you, take away from you
the last per cent of your little profits.
'You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed out the three small
groceries here in Berkeley by virtue of your superior combination, you swelled
out your chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent your wife to
Europe on the profits you had gained by eating up the three small groceries.
It is dog eat dog, and you ate them up. But, on the other hand, you are being
eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore you squeal. And what I say to
you is true of all of you at this table. You are all squealing. You are all
playing the losing game, and you are all squealing about it.
'But when you squeal you don't state the situation flatly, as I have stated
it. You don't say that you like to squeeze profits out of others, and that you
are making all the row because others are squeezing your profits out of you.
No, you are too cunning for that. You say something else. You make
small-capitalist political speeches such as Mr Calvin made. What did he say?
Here are a few of his phrases I caught: "Our original principles are all
right." "What this country requires is a return to fundamental American
methods free opportunity for all," "The spirit of liberty in which this nation
was born," "Let us return to the principles of our fore-fathers."
'When he says "free opportunity for all," he means free opportunity to
squeeze profits, which freedom of opportunity is now denied him by the great
trusts. And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated these phrases
so often that you believe them. You want opportunity to plunder your fellowmen
in your own small way, but you hypnotise yourselves into thinking you want
freedom. You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads
you to believe that you are patriotic. Your desire for profits, which is sheer
selfishness, you metamorphose into altruistic solicitude for suffering
humanity. Come on now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for once.
Look the matter in the face and state it in direct terms.'
There were flushed and angry faces at the table, and withal a measure of awe.
They were a little frightened at this smooth-faced young fellow, and the swing
and smash of his words, and his dreadful trait of calling a spade a spade. Mr
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Calvin promptly replied:
'And why not?' he demanded. 'Why can we not return to the ways of our fathers
when this republic was founded? You have spoken much truth. Mr Everhard,
unpalatable though it has been. But here amongst ourselves let us speak out.
Let us throw off all disguise and accept the truth as Mr Everhard has flatly
stated it. It is true that we smaller capitalists are after profits, and that
the trusts are taking our profits away from us. It is true that we want to
destroy the trusts in order that our profits may remain to us. And why can we
not do it? Why not? I say, why not?'
'Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter,' Ernest said with a pleased
expression. 'I'll try to tell you why not, though the telling will be rather
hard. You see, you fellows have studied business, in a small way, but you have
not studied social evolution at all. You are in the midst of a transition
stage now in economic evolution, but you do not understand it, and that's what
causes all the confusion. Why cannot you return? Because you can't. You can no
more cause the tide of economic evolution to flow back in its channel along
the way it came than you can make water run uphill. Joshua made the sun stand
still upon Gibeon, but you would outdo Joshua. You would make the sun go
backward in the sky. You would have time retrace its steps from noon to
morning.
'In a face of labour-saving machinery, of organised production, of the
increased efficiency of combination, you would set the economic sun back a
whole generation or so to the time when there were no great capitalists, no
great machinery, no railroads a time when a host of little capitalists warred
with each other in economic anarchy, and when production was primitive,
wasteful, unorganised, and costly. Believe me, Joshua's task was easier, and
he had Jehovah to help him. But God has forsaken you small capitalists. The
sun of the small capitalists is setting. It will never rise again. Nor is it
in your power even to make it stand still. You are perishing, and you are
doomed to perish utterly from the face of society.
'This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God. Combination is
stronger than competition. Primitive man was a puny creature hiding in the
crevices of the rocks. He combined and made war upon his carnivorous enemies.
They were competitive beasts. Primitive man was a combinative beast, and
because of it he rose to primacy over all the animals. And man has been
achieving greater and greater combinations ever since. It is combinationversus
competition, a thousand centuries long struggle, in which competition has
always been worsted. Who so enlists on the side of competition perishes.'
'But the trusts themselves arose out of competition,' Mr Calvin interrupted.
'Very true,' Ernest answered. 'And the trusts themselves destroyed
competition. That, by your own word, is why you are no longer in the dairy
business.'
The first laughter of the evening went around the table, and even Mr Calvin
joined in the laugh against himself.
'And now, while we are on the trusts,' Ernest went on, 'let us settle a few
things. I shall make certain statements, and if you disagree with them, speak
up. Silence will mean agreement. Is it not true that a machine-loom will weave
more cloth and weave more cheaply than a hand-loom?' He paused, but nobody
spoke up. 'Is it not then highly irrational to break the machine-loom and go
back to the clumsy and more costly hand-loom method of weaving?' Heads nodded
in acquiescence. 'Is it not true that that combination known as a trust
produces more efficiently and cheaply than can a thousand competing small
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concerns?' Still no one objected. 'Then is it not irrational to destroy that
cheap and efficient combination?'
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