D6 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,

xisting among British engineering firms until the recent combinations
 for the China trade discussed in the following paragraph.
With these exceptions British firms formerly competed on foreign
business.
In 1914 a powerful and well-organized corporation was formed,
known as the “ Representation for British Manufacturers (Ltd.)”.
It is composed of numerous important engineering firms, with its
head offices in London and Peking, and branch offices at Shanghai,
Hankow,and Canton. Some of its more important members are John
Brown &amp; Co. (Ltd.), Sheffield; Dorman, Long &amp; Co. (Litd.), Midlesbrough
 ; and Thos. Firth &amp; Sons (Ltd.), Sheffield. The following
 lines are represented: Forging presses, boilers, steam hammers,
bridges, harbor works, shipbuilding, steel forgings and castings,
brass castings, armor plate, sheets, plates, telegraph wire, railway
roaches and wagons, structural steel work, tool steel and projectiles,
marine and locomotive engines, machine tools, railway and tramway
rolling stock and appliances, screening and conveying plants,
briquette plants, aerial ropeways, coke ovens, and coal washers. The
sole object of this organization is to maintain staff representatives
in certain foreign countries, particularly China, for the sale of
manufactured goods, combining the features of # propaganda agency
and a selling organization. The countries other than China which
are covered, or were to be covered, by its activities are Eastern
Siberia, Korea, Formosa, Turkey, Roumania, Greece, Bulgaria,
Servia, and the Philippine Islands. Working expenses are provided
by the manufacturers, and funds sufficient to cover estimated expenses
 for five years have been guaranteed. An important feature
of this associated representation is that the economies effected tend
to make possible a reduction of selling prices.
It was reported in 1915 that the Anglo-Chinese Engineers’ Association
 was being formed with the object of securing an outlet for
British machinery, engineering stores and plant of all descriptions.
It was designed to give a group of British manufacturing engineers
a sales organization in China more effectivesthan any existing one
and to safeguard them from aggressive foreign competition. It is
strictly a noncompeting group and is thus described in the London
and China Telegraph of June 1, 1915, page 458:
Put briefly, we learn that the proposed organization will consist of
10 noncompeting manufacturing engineers who make plants suitable
for the needs of the market and from 25 to 85 firms of engineering
material and tool makers. Fach of these firms will be required to
take stock in the combine, the value of which is determined in each
separate instance by the ratio that the line under consideration bears
to the whole of the imports of machinery, engineering plant, and

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1 Macrosty, op. cit.,, p. 83.