216 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
fashion in the various branches. But the introduetion of new inventions
 and new methods of production, the development of new
markets and new branches of the industry, the altered condition of
industrial organization generally, and the fundamental change in
the international position of the English iron and steel business
since the seventies compelled great changes in the structure and
prganization of the producing units in both the national and local
aspects. The special stimulus for this change came from the pressure
of foreign competitors in markets hitherto almost exclusively held by
the British, and later even in the home market itself.
The movement toward combination has not gone nearly as far as
in Germany and a few other countries, but within the last 10 or
15 years there has been a very active movement toward the concentration
 of industry into large single corporations. Many of the
small iron producers of an earlier period have disappeared, and in
some cases the process of integration is nearly completed. Independent
 pig-iron firms, for example, no longer exist unless possessing
 some privileged markets or special supplies of raw materials.
As early as 1903 a few companies had developed to the point where
they owned their ore deposits and coal mines, made their coke, constructed
 their own plants, manufactured their iron and steel products,
 owned railway lines, had their own jetties or harbors, possessed
 their own ships, and carried on affiliated businesses.?
The tendency to embrace a whole line of manufacture from the
raw material to the finished product within the control of a single
company is characteristic of the iron and steel industry of Great
Britain. This has been brought about to a considerable extent
through the amalgamation of competitors. The following companies,
 manufacturing mainly blast-furnace and rolling-mill products,
 typify the results of this movement.
Bell Bros. (Ltd.), now controlled jointly with Dorman, Long &amp;
Co. (Ltd.), was originally established in 1844 and early acquired
important iron mines and collieries and extensive deposits of iron
ore, coal, and limestone in the Cleveland district. By 1899 it had
hecome an influential factor in the production of pig iron and, with
the assistance of the neighboring firm of Dorman, Long &amp; Co., undertook
 the manufacture of finished steel. Dorman, Long &amp; Co. (Ltd.),
had begun business in 1876 in Middlesbrough, where they had puddling
 furnaces and made bars and angles for shipbuilding purposes.
In 1879 they acquired the Brittania works, specializing in girders,
and in 1899 absorbed the sheet works of Jones Bros. and the wire

os R. Carter, The Tendency Towards Industrial Combination (London), 1913, pp.
¥ Carter, op. cit, pp. T2-75.
VW. J. Ashley, British Industries (London), 1903, pp. 18-14,