A characteristic battle between Daly and the paper involved the rising number of "jitney" operators running competition with the Portland Railway, Light and Power Company's monopoly on transportation within the city. The "Oregonian" viewed the situation as a threat to an established business providing an essential community service by opportunistic upstarts engaging in unfair competition, while Daly defended the jitneys, whose owners had organized a union to defend their interests, as American individual ingenuity and collective organizing at its best. "It is said that jitney competition is unfair," Daly's argument ran. "Where has there ever been competition that is fair? Competition means the survival of the fittest; there is nothing fair about it."