SUMMARY.

5

land, Holland, Sweden, Belgium, J apan, and certain other countries
where policies concerning industrial combinations are quite diverse
from that of the United States business men are much freer to cooperate
 and combine than in this country. They have developed
numerous comprehensive combinations, sometimes aided by their
Governments, which effectually unite their activities both in domestic
and foreign trade. In England and Austria-Hungary, though freedom
 to combine is considerably abridged under the law, important
tombinations have also been formed.
In Germany prior to the war there were 600 important cartels, i. 8.
combinations to control the market, embracing practically every
industry in the Empire. Many dominated the export trade of their
industries and carried on vigorous campaigns to extend their foreign
business, to prevent competition among German producers in foreign
markets, and to secure profitable prices. Thus the German dyecolor
 industry operated as a unit in foreign trade under the leadership
of two great groups of allied producers, the Badische group and the
Héchst-Cassella, which were working under a fifty-year agreement
to avoid competition between themselves. The manufacture and
exportation of electrical equipment has been made one of the bulwarks
 of German foreign trade by two great companies, the Allgemeine
 Elektricitits-Gesellschafi and the Siemens-Schuckert, working
 in harmony with each other, with numerous subsidiaries at
home and abroad. Half of the $150,000,000 worth of coal and coke
exported annually was sold by one central selling agency, maintained
by the great Rheinisch-Westfilieche coal syndicate, of which some
of the Prussian Government mines are members, and which controlled
 the bulk of all the coal and coke produced in the Empire,
Practically all the rapidly increasing iron and steel export business
was handled respectively by the single selling agencies of the
Roheisen-Verband and the Stahlwerks- Verband, the aggressive and
closely connected unions of German iron and steel manufacturers.
The coal and iron and steel combinations have fostered foreign business
 through export bounties and other means,
In France and Belgium, syndicates of iron and steel, glass, and
other industries were strong factors in domestic and foreign trade.
Silk-ribbon manufacturers of France and Germany conducted their
export trade in accordance with a joint agreement. In Italy, Russia,
Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Sweden, Greece, Argentina, Chile,
and Ecuador, central organizations unite the interests of producers
in the industries characteristic of those countries, such as coal, iron
and steel, agricultural machinery, oil, sulphur, superphosphates,
cement, matches, chocolate, embroidery, silk goods, watches, cotton
goods, condensed milk, canned fish, currants, quebracho, iodine,
cacao, ete.