274 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
about 45 per cent is controlled by the A. E. G. and about 35 per cent
by Siemens.!
The products made by both the A. E. G. and the Siemens-Schuckert
concern cover everything in the electrical industry from lamps and
motors to the great electric street car and lighting systems for entire
rural or urban districts. The A. E. G. also manufactures aeroplanes
and automobiles, and the Siemens-Schuckert have built dirigibles.?
The activities of these two concerns are international in character
and of great importance in the electrical industry of the world.
By process of concentration the 28 leading companies in the
slectrical industry in Germany had up to 1900 combined in seven
groups,® viz:
(1) The Siemens &amp; Halske group, with four members;
(2) The Allgemeine FElektricitits-Gesellschaft group, with four
members;
(3) The Schuckert group, with four members;
(4) The Union Electric Co., Berlin, with two members;
(5) The Helios group, with five members;
(6) The Lahmeyer group, with two members;
(7) The Kummer group, with seven members.
As a result of the disastrous crisis in 1900, due largely to overproduction,
 the Kummer group collapsed and the Helios disintegrated.
 The powerful banks allied with the industry then promoted
a policy of concentration.* In the end this resulted in the domination
 of the entire German electrical industry by the Allgemeine
Elektricitié ts-Gesellschaft and the Siemens-Schuckert Co.’
The Allgemeine Elekiricitiits-Gesellschaft.—OraanzaTion.—The
Allgemeine Elektricitéts-Gesellschaft had already been organized as
parly as 1883 as a stock company. The company had been evolved
from the German Edison Co. for Applied Electricity (Deutsche
Edisongesellschaft fiir angewandte Elektricitat), founded by the elder
Rathenau. This enterprise was based on the Edison—principally the
incandescent lamp—patents, previously acquired by Rathenau. In
the main the A. E. G. intrusted the manufacturing activities to Siemens
 &amp; Halske, its chief competitor and at that time the largest
electrical concern in Germany, under an operating agreement, and
bent its energies to the creation of plants for the delivery of electric
current. Under this arrangement the A. E. G. was restricted to the
manufacture of incandescent lamps, small dynamos, and small supplies,
 while’ the rest of the field was left open to Siemens &amp; Halske.
Later the Thomson-Houston Co., through the Union Elektricitdts-~

1 Bee Pt. II, p. 48.
:R. Liefmann, Kartelle und Trusts (Stuttgart), p. 163.
1], Riesser, Die deutschen Grossbanken und ihre Konzentration, 3d ed., 1910, p. 543.
'W. Koch, Die Konzentrationsbewegung in d. deutschen Elektroindustrie, 1907, pp. 22, 30, 49.
‘J. Singer, Das Land der Monopole; Amerika oder Deutschland? Berlin, 1913, pp. 195, 200.
Ibid., p. 5,