CONDITIONS IN PARTICULAR INDUSTRIES. 287
shut out German chemicals in any country by high tariffs are met by
the establishment of German branches in those countries.
Another factor effective in the chemical trade and widely used by
Germany is the control of patents in foreign countries. In America
many of the drugs imported are of a proprietary character and can not
be duplicated because of patents given to Germans. Germans have
American patents on aspirin, phenacetin, antipyrin, and a great
number of coal-tar products. These are both process and product
patents, so that Americans are effectually prevented from producing
 these chemicals except with the consent of the Germans. Germany
 had similar patents in European countries before the war.
By control of patents they are able to obtain high prices for chemicals
and substances used in compounding prescriptions and the manufacture
 of medicinal preparations. .
If American manufacturers attempt to approach customers of Germany
 with products under German syndicate control they are met with
concerted action to regulate prices. In many foreign markets German
goods have been so long established that they are looked upon as
standard and their superiority to American goods is presumed.
The German chemical industry has been less subject to the sharp
alternations of business prosperity and adversity than other branches
of industry. In this industry, as distinguished from most other
German industries, there is no evidence of any considerable influence
 having been exerted by the banks on the movement toward
concentration, the initiative for developing combinations having
come, in the main, exclusively from the chemical manufacturers
themselves.
The extent and methods of combination are well illustrated by
conditions in leading branches of the industry, viz., the manufacture
of coal-tar dyestuffs, and in the production of soda and alcohol. (For
potash, see pp. 108-111.)
Coal-tar dyes.—The German coal-tar dyestuff business is one of the
leading German export industries and is international in scope,
dominating the world in its line. In 1913 the total consumption of
artificial dyestuffs in the world amounted to over $92,000,000.
Germany produced 74 per cent of this entire amount and over onehalf
 of the materials needed to make the remainder. . This highly
developed German industry includes also the manufacture of high
explosives, pharmaceutical and photographic preparations, artificial
rubber, the production of nitrogen from the air, etc., in several of
which branches it possesses a monopoly protected by numerous
i Board of Trade Journal (London), Sept. 10, 1914, p. 686.
J, Riesser, Die deutschen Grossbanken und ihre Konzentration, 3. Aufl. 1910, pp. 547, 549.
37, H, Norton, Dysstuffs for American Textile and Other Industries, Bureau of Foreign and Domastic
 Comamerce. Special Agents Series No. 98, 1915, pp. 8 fol.