This brings me to consider what I apprehend to have been the most
efficient of all the causes in the reduction of the prices of
manufactured articles, and that is COMPETITION. By competition the
total amount of the supply is increased, and by increase of the supply a
competition in the sale ensues, and this enables the consumer to buy at
lower rates. Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind,
none is greater than that of competition. It is action and reaction. It
operates between individuals of the same nation, and between different
nations. It resembles the meeting of the mountain torrent, grooving, by
its precipitous motion, its own channel, and ocean's tide. Unopposed,
it sweeps every thing before it; but, counterpoised, the waters become
calm, safe, and regular. It is like the segments of a circle or an arch:
taken separately, each is nothing; but in their combination they produce
efficiency, symmetry, and perfection. By the American system this vast
power has been excited in America, and brought into being to act in
cooperation or collision with European industry. Europe acts within
itself, and with America; and America acts within itself, and with
Europe. The consequence is the reduction of prices in both hemispheres.
Nor is it fair to argue from the reduction of prices in Europe to her
own presumed skill and labor exclusively. We affect her prices, and she
affects ours. This must always be the case, at least in reference to any
articles as to which there is not a total non-intercourse; and if our
industry, by diminishing the demand for her supplies, should produce a
diminution in the price of those supplies, it would be very unfair to
ascribe that reduction to her ingenuity, instead of placing it to the
credit of our own skill and excited industry.

Practical men understand very well this state of the case, whether
they do or do not comprehend the causes which produce it. I have in my