#14 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

The home market for the Steel Syndicate is the German Empire
and Luxemburg. All else is considered the foreign market. Prior
to the founding of the syndicate in 1904 individual firms had their
own agents, commissioners, or branch officers abroad. This led to
price cutting among the German firms against one another, as well
as against non-German firms. Upon the formation of the syndicate
steps were taken at once to consolidate the German steel-works selling
interests in all the foreign markets. The most important foreign
markets are Great Britain, Holland, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and
South America; also Turkey, Asia Minor, and, to some extent, Russia.
 In 1912 the syndicate maintained foreign offices in London,
Amsterdam, and Brussels. It has also organized into associations
wholesale dealers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, England,
 Belgium, and Holland? For the purposes of systematically
promoting and regulating the export trade in the common interest
and to equalize the disadvantages at which the German export
industry has been placed with respect to manufactured products in
consequence of the low export prices of the raw material cartels, the
Steel Syndicate, in conjunction with the Rhenish- Westphalian Coal
Syndicate, maintains a special clearing house for exports at Diisseldorf
 (Abrechnungsstelle fiir die Ausfuhr). The office computes,
regulates, and pays export bounties to the cartel members, based on
a calculation of the amount of raw material consumed in making
them.* The bounties granted by the steel syndicate from 1905 to
1914 on exports of finished products amounted to the following per
ton of half-finished products consumed : 4

TABLE 15.—Bounties granted by German Steel Syndicate, 1905-191}.
Marks.
15
10
5
~ mE eb
—
eee 15
ER ||
ssi. 2
_- 15
10
17

From Jan. 1, 1905, to Mar. 31, 1906.
From Apr. 1, 1906, to June 30, 1906
From July 1, 1906, to Mar. 31, 1907
From Apr. 1, 1907, to June 30, 1907
from July 1, 1907, to Sept. 30, 1907
From Oct. 1, 1907, to Dec. 31, 1908.
From Jan, 1, 1909, to Mar. 31, 1910
From May 19, 1910, to Dee. 31, 1911
From Jan. 1, 1912, to May 81, 1912
rom June 1, 1912, to May 31, 1913
From June 1, 1918, to*_________________
From Oct. 20. 1914. to Mar. 5. 1915

These export bounties have been increased or decreased in response
to the fall or rise in the home demand, the primary object being to

1 Ppt. IT, p. 11.
"A. Zéllner, op. cit., p. 88 fol.
iF, Walker, op. cit, pp. 393-394. W. Morgearoth, * Die Exportpolitik der Kartelle.”
1907, p. 53 fol.
i Kartell-Rundschau, 1915, p. 118.
¥ Not availahle.