COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE. 141
and industrial activity and energy of the Swiss people, resting upon
long training for export business.
Export associations.—Associations for promoting over-sea trade
have long existed among the Swiss, and it is alleged that Switzerland’s
 export trade has been built up chiefly by their means. In
1918 the Swiss Trading and Industrial Company for Brazil was
organized, with a capital stock of 5,000,000 francs ($1,000,000). Its
main office is in Ziirich. This company is to promote chiefly the
export of Swiss machinery and to act as representative for Swiss
manufacturers of noncompeting industries? In 1912 the Société
Suisse d’Exportation was organized” at Lausanne, with the special
purpose of promoting Swiss export trade to Argentina. In 1911 an
3xport association for Emmental cheese was organized in Brugg.*
To Swiss banks is due in large part the growth of Swiss commerce
and trade. In the instructions issued by a large Swiss bank to its
branch managers one provision specifies that no business is to be
transacted by which Swiss interests might be injured to the gain of
foreign enterprises.® The electrical industry, in particular, owes its
extensive development largely to the assistance of banks. Several
of these are closely affiliated with foreign, especially German, electrical
 interests, and thus their influence is international in scope.
The following are the most important:
(1) Bank fiir Elektrische Unternehmungen, Zjirich, controlled by
the German Allgemeine Elektricitits Gesellschaft. (See p. 274 fol.)
(2) Schweizerische Gesellschaft fiir Elektrische Industrie. Basel,
connected with the German Siemens concern.
(8) Société Franco-Suisse pour I'Industrie Electrique, Geneva.
(4) A.-G. Motor, Baden i. A., connected with Brown Boveri &amp; Co.
(5) Schweizerische Eisenbahnbank.
A recent trend in the development of Swiss foreign trade is to be
seen in the increasing number of branch establishments founded by
large Swiss industrial concerns in foreign éountries. This method
of trade expansion has been resorted to mainly in order to avoid
heavy transportation expenses and high protective tariffs in certain
countries. The close relations maintained by these foreign branches
with their home establishments, as well as the profits realized from
these foreign investments, constitute a considerable source of Switzerland’s
 national wealth, and serve at the same time to keep the
whole economic life of that country in close touch with foreign
markets.

!T. Geering u. R. Hotz, op. cit., pp. 72, 75, 83 fol.
2K. Welter, Die Exportgesellschaften u. die assoziative Exzportférderung in d. Schweiz
m 19, Jahrhundert, Bern, 1915, pp. 17, 110.
*Das’ Handelsmuseum, 1913, p. 77.
'P. H. Schmidt, op. eit., p. 50.
4 Ibid., pp. 124, 125.
'T. Geering, u. R. Hotz, op. cit, p. 127 fok