CONDITIONS IN PARTICULAR INDUSTRIES, 251

-inted companies, besides subsidiary companies, and by March 31,
1905, there had been five further acquisitions.'
For the past eight years the association has paid an annual dividend
 of 8 per cent on the ordinary shares and 5 per cent on the
preferred. Profits for the year ending March, 1916, were £675,854.
The present total issued share and loan capital is £8,450,000.%
The modern English tendency to coneentrate interests by grouping
a number of small concerns under one management instead of building
 large individual plants is evident in the Fine Cotton Spinners’
Association which, in 1911, led the British Empire with 100 mills
totaling about 4,000,000 spindles.®
The success of the Association and its importance in the industry
are estabiished and increasing.
Tae Coats CoMmBINATION.—The first combination in the British
textile industries which assumed the scope and importance of a trust
in the ordinary sense of the term appeared in the thread business, in
the absorption by #. &amp; P. Coats (Ltd.) of its chief competitors in
1895-96. The business of J. &amp; P. Coats originated in 1826 and grew
to such proportions that when it was incorporated in 1890 as the
limited liability company of J. &amp; P. Coats, the purchase price was
£5,750,000. Messrs. Coats took one-third of the debentures and
stock issued and received in cash £3,833,350. Besides the mills at
Paisley the company owned the Conant Thread Co. with works at
Pawtucket, R. L., through which they were able to take advantage
of the United States protective tariff.
In order to decrease competition a great amalgamation of interests
was effected in 1896. In that year Coats &amp; Co., who had acquired
the firm of Kerr &amp; Co., of Paisley, in August, 1895, bought out
their chief rivals, Clarke &amp; Co., of Paisley, and two English concerns,
James Chadwick &amp; Co., of Bolton, and Jonas Brook &amp; Co., of Meltham,
 near Huddersfield. For some time previous these four great
rival concerns, all of which were old and well established, had been
allied through the Central Thread Agency, a sales association which
marketed the products of all its members.
At the time of the amalgamation the company had 16 factories,
including mills in the United States, Canada, and Russia, 60 branch
houses, and 150 depots. Later a coal mine was acquired, and control
 over supplies of cotton yarn, the chief raw material, made more
secure by the acquisition of 200,000 ordinary shares in the Fine
Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association.® (See p. 250.)

1 Macrosty, op. cit., p. 138.
1 The Statist (London), May 22, 1915, pp. 488, 489; May 20, 1918, p. 921.
$3. M. Hause, English Cotton-Goods Trade, Bureau of Manufactules, Special Agents Series No, 47
1911), p. 4.
+ Macrosty, op. cit., pp. 125-127; Carter, op. oit., pp. 256 and 314-315,
iMaerosty. op. cit, p. 137.