118 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,

large, despite the fact that France is in close proximity to countries
where combinations have grown and flourished.
This condition is probably due in large part to the character of the
industrial products of France. In the industries whose products may
be produced as easily by one factory or mine as another, combinations
have flourished. Such, for example, are coal and iron mining, the
production of pig iron, iron and steel rolled products, wrapping
paper, petroleum, etc. But a large part of the French products, especially
 those which are exported, consists of manufactures de luxe,
fancy articles, etc., which appeal to personal taste and do not conform
 to a type. It is difficult to bring such industries together in a
central selling bureau, as the manufacturers are unwilling to give up
their clientele and the individual quality of their products, or their
prand. The French do not like to abandon their individual designs
and trade-marks for the generic term “ Made in France.”
There are exceptions, however, and even in the textile industry,
where individual mark and clientele are considered above everything
else, some of the combinations have been successful, as among the
manufacturers of flax in the Department of Nord, the cotton spinners
in the Vosges, and the wool combers at Roubaix. At Lyon a silkfinishers’
 combination was organized.
Tt still remains to be determined, however, whether those products
for which France is so well known abroad can be successfully placed
on the market under the regulations of a comptoir or cartel. All
efforts, for example, to centralize one of the principal industries of
France, that of wine growing, have thus far failed; the sale of gloves
is not conducted by a central selling agency; and that of many fancy
articles is free of the influences of combination.
In discussing this phase of the subject the Annales des Douanes.
under date of December 15, 1915, remarks as follows:
The type of the syndicated product is coal, and that is why the
Rhenish-Westphalian syndicate (of Germany) in 1903 absorbed
98.7 per cent of the total production of the basin. On the other hand
articles of luxury or fancy articles do not enter the cartel. They do
not depend immediately upon an industry’s organizing or not organizing
 in a cartel. The existence of a legislative obstacle, like that
which certain articles of our code oppose to the formation of cartels,
is only one of the elements in the case. The formation of the cartel
is essentially bound up with production by series. In France its
adoption would immediately run against two obstacles, the character
 of our industry and the manner in which we dispose of our
products. We are in a state of inferiority face to face with Germany
so far as common products are concerned, and our individualistic
character, as well as our legislation, opposes the formation by our
industrials of associations of this kind.
While the fear of certain provisions of the penal and civil codes
undoubtedly has impeded the progress of these combinations in