CONDITIONS IN PARTICULAR INDUSTRIES. 219

jifferent units is secured is the mutual stockholding system, by
which the same individuals are largely interested in several companies.

In addition to the development of large corporations, which combine
 in their work all the various steps in production and manufacture
 from raw material to the finished product, there is hardly a
branch of this industry in which the producing units have not been
combined under temporary syndicates in order to keep the prices
of their products at remunerative levels, but many of these, e. g.,
for pig irom, tubes, tin plates, and finished iron products, have not
been very successful. In other branches combinations have met
with considerable success. The manufacturers of ship and boiler
plates, galvanized plates, tin-plate bars, rails, bar iron, and other
branches of the iron and steel trades of Great Britain have formed
such organizations. Thus it was stated as long ago as 1898 that in
the rail, ship-plate, boiler-plate, bar-iron, and other products, agreements
 or understandings as to prices, representing forms of temporary
 combination, were in such a degree of operation that prices
were fairly well maintained and cutting largely prevented.?
These combinations usually assume the form of an association.
Only about half a dozen of these associations have exercised, under
certain conditions of trade, really effective and systematic regulation
of prices.
Combinations in the English iron and steel industry have not become
 the significant factor that they have in other countries. The
English producers are characteristically individualistic; the combinations
 lack centralized control. Generally they are mediums for
united action as to grades, prices, output, and territory, but exercise
 no control over actual processes of production or distribution,
and rarely become selling combinations. Since the home market
may at any time be made a dumping ground by foreign producers,
most of the combinations have been formed as a means of protection
from foreign competition. While some combinations bend their energies
 toward the export fields, the large foreign trade of Great Britain
in iron and steel has been built up mainly through the medium of
strong individual companies.
The principal combinations in the iron and steel industry have
been the associations for boiler plates and ship plates, galvanized
steel plates, steel bars, malleable iron bars, and steel rails.
The Scotch Steelmakers’ Association.—This association and
its main rival, the North of England Makers, composed of manufacturers
 of ship and boiler plates, in recent years have had agreements
 which assign certain territory to each, thereby making it

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1 Carter, op. cit, pp. 135-136.
}H. Levy. Monopoly and Competition (London), 1911, p, 233; Carter, op. cit, p. 197.