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Updated: June 9, 2025
In other commodities all the large dealers fix their own price; they try to underbid one another, and that keeps down the price; they try to get as much as they can out of the buyer, and that keeps up the price. Between the two what Adam Smith calls the higgling of the market settles it. And this is the most simple and natural mode of doing business, but it is not the only mode.
The difficulties to be faced by the woman whose only way of self-support is limited to the needle, whether in machine or handwork, are fourfold: first, her own incompetency must very often head the list, and prevent her from securing first-class work; second, middlemen or sweaters lower the price to starvation point; third, contract work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and fourth, she is underbid from still another quarter, that of the countrywoman living at home, who takes the work at any price offered.
Lest fault be found, our government officials are unable to enter upon the detailed higgling in fixing rates required by every cargo and charter. Therefore they must take refuge in rigid regulations and in fixed rates. In result, their competitors underbid by the smallest margins necessary to get the cargoes.
All that the shipper had to do was to wait while the companies underbid each other, each in turn cutting off a slice from the margin of profit that would result from the carrying of the traffic until, not infrequently and in some notorious cases, not only was that margin entirely whittled away but the traffic was finally carried at a figure which meant a heavy loss to the carrier.
Everybody laughed at that, and Mrs. Osgood threw up her hands. "We can't help ourselves! No one can ever underbid him, except by paying for the privilege. Algernon won't take a salary." Algernon flushed uneasily. "I haven't earned one yet," he muttered. "And besides, salaries for public positions "
The effect of our large fleet in the world's markets is thus to hold up rates, for so long as this great fleet in one hand holds a fixed rate others will only barely underbid. If we hold up rates an increasing number of our ships will be idle as the private fleet grows.
Producers' cooperation in the United States has generally been a "hard times" remedy. When industrial prosperity has passed its high crest and strikes have begun to fail, producers' cooperation has often been used as a retaliatory measure to bring the employer to terms by menacing to underbid him in the market.
With but a small bunch of beeves to brand on the starting day, the direction in which the herd was allowed to leave the bed-ground would be the final answer. If west, Dimmit had underbid Lasalle; if the contrary, then the departure of this herd would be a matter of record in the latter county. Dr. Beaver enjoyed the situation hugely, acting the intermediary in behalf of his guest.
The strongest of those have succeeded in establishing a standard wage less than which no one shall accept; unemployed men, who in free competition would accept less than this standard wage, are supported by the funds of the Union, that they may not underbid.
They did not try to underbid each other, and they were perfectly good-humored; as soon as he had made his choice, the rejected multitude returned to their places on the curbstone, pursuing the successful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, while the horses went on munching the contents of their leathern head-bags, and tossing them into the air to shake down the lurking grains of corn.
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