COMPETITIVE PERSONALITY
435
the one side, and the consuming public, on the other side; the chief
expedient in this business-like competition being salesmanship and
sabotage." What the TNEC documents was already well supposed,
but now the documentation is directly from the mouths of the men
·who . run things. In telling of the manner in which competition has
been hedged in by giant corporations, and by groups of smaller cor–
porations acting collectively, they have made clear the locus of the big
competition and the masklike character of liberalism's rhetoric.
Yet for the benefit of their imaginary hero, the senators, and
their experts, have persisted in fetishizing this mask of big business.
They have proposed that the good old captains of industry be given a
rebirth with the full benefit of governmental midwifery.
Charles Beard has remarked that this proposal resembles not a
mouse creeping out of a mountain of fact but a mere squeak. Yet it
remains the best that the official liberal has to say about the economic
facts of life. In continuing to see competition as salvation from com–
plicated trouble, the priestlike senators
in
charge of the ceremony
naturally fall into the old petty-bourgeois complaints; and the experts,
perhaps for the record, fall in with the .senators. Now they are together
in the big volumes with their thin little wisdom. But their wisdom is
nostalgic, and their offerings are dwarfed by the great facts of the
modern economy. Their mood ought to be the mood of plight, but
they have succeeded in setting up a bright image of the little business–
man, who could be rehabilitated as the hero of their system, if only
competition were once more to prevail.
II
This liberal hero, the little businessman, has a tendency to
forget the senatorial rhetoric put out in his behalf; he doesn't seem
to want to develop his character by free and open competition. Last
year in six middle-sized cities, arbitrarily selected samples of little busi–
nessmen were asked if they thought "free competition was by and
large a good thing." With authority and vehemence they all answered,
Yes, of course, what do you mean? Then they were asked, "Here in
this, your town?" Yes, they said, but now hesitating a little. Finally:
How about here in this town in furniture, or groceries--or whatever
the man's specific line was. Their answers were of two sorts: Yes, if
it's fair competition, which turned out to mean something very simple
and understandable:
If
it doesn't make me compete. The second type
of answer also adds up to the brotherliness of the little businessmen,
and their competitive opposition to the public: Well, you see, in cer-
