L6 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
ASSISTANCE RECEIVED FROM BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL MEN,

Not only in the public hearings, but also in the painstaking replies
to the schedules, in thousands of special letters, and in interviews
with field agents, a large number of representative business and professional
 men have given the Commission extensive assistance in
this study, contributing a great fund of information covering a wide
range of matters pertinent to the inquiry.

SECTION 4. WHAT THE REPORT DEALS WITH.

The report deals with the advisability of cooperation in American
sxport trade. As a basis for the consideration of this question, Chapter
 IT gives the outstanding facts regarding the amount and trend
of American foreign trade and its importance. The analysis shows
that the United States is becoming less and less an agricultural
sountry and more and more an industrial one. Imports of foodstuffs
and of raw materials are increasing and exports of products of forest,
mine, and factory are now more than two-thirds of all the export
business of the country.
Chapter III shows the broad competitive conditions which American
 export trade has had to meet in the markets of the world, and
the comprehensive business organization of the great commercial
countries who are its rivals in those markets. It shows the coordination
 of their transportation facilities, banks, and industrial combinations,
 which enables them to hold their domesfic markets and to
push out into the export field in competition with other countries.
Because of the special interest attaching to the South American
market and the possibilities of development for trade there, Chapter
[V is devoted to that subject.
Chapter V takes up a number of the particular industries that are
most vital, actually or potentially, to the export commerce, and
discusses the operation of foreign selling combinations in those industries
 and the feasibility of American export combinations in
them. It also takes up several important foreign buying combinations
 that handle as a unit the buying of raw materials or commodities
 for their membership.
The final chapter gives the conclusions of the Commission and its
recommendation that declaratory legislation be enacted so as to permit
 export selling combinations of American producers and manufacturers,
 with effective safeguards for the public interest.