COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE. 121
of its members, and they in turn have the right to examine the accounts
 of the comptoir.
In making shipments the producer sends an invoice to the comptoir,
at a price provisionally established by the general assembly. The
comptoir remits to the member and sends the purchaser another
invoice containing the actual selling price. The producer’s invoice
price is not final, but is adjusted at the close of the year, according to
the expenses of the comptoir.
Infractions of the rules of the comptoir are penalized, and members
 are required to deposit a collateral to insure their payment
when imposed. Should a member wish to appeal from the imposition.of
 a fine, provision is made for a court of arbitration to act
upon the appeal.
Ordinarily the purchaser may make his choice between long-term
and prompt payments, the latter carrying the benefit of a discount.
In the majority of cases the purchaser pays 90 days from the end
of the month of delivery, or one month from the end of the month
of delivery with 2 per cent discount. Some comptoirs give no discount.

GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF COMBINATIONS.—Irance attempts no
special regulation of combinations other than such as may fall under
the sections of the penal and civil codes, which made provisions
against monopolies long before the modern form of industrial combination
 had become known. The principal provision of the Penal
Code against cartels is found in article 419, namely:
Arr. 419. All those who by false or calumnious reports sown by
design in the community, by offers of prices higher than those asked
by the vendors themselves, by union or coalition among the principal
possessors of the same merchandise or commodity not to sell or to
sell at a certain price only, or by whatever fraudulent ways and
means, shall have effected the advance or decline of the prices of
commodities or merchandise or of public securities above or below
the prices which the natural and free competition of trade would
have fixed, shall be punished with imprisonment of one month at
least or of one year at most and with a fine of five hundred francs
to ten thousand francs. The culprits may, further, be placed by
Jecree or judgment under the surveillance of the superior police
during two years at least and five years at most.?
But as far back as 1830, and again in 1834, the court of Paris
held that it was no offense to agree to maintain a price, but not to
raise it.&gt; Within the past few years a number of cases have been

1 Carlioz, op. cit, pp B59 to 70.
2 Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on Trust Laws and Unfair Competition,
Washington, March 15, 1915, pp. 269-270.
3 P. Obrin. Le Comptoir Métallurgique de Longwy, Paris, 1908, p. 177.