302 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,

The advantages in ocean freight rates which European producers
snjoyed are sufficiently discussed in the preceding chapters. (See pp.
32-40.) The present discussion, therefore, is chiefly concerned with
the combinations among foreign cement manufacturers, taking up
the more important countries separately, and with the opportunity
for the development of increased foreign trade through cooperation
among American producers for export business.

GERMANY.

Prior to the war Germany ranked next to the United States among
the producers of hydraulic cement. According to official Government
statistics, 139 cement factories in 1912 produced 42,319,710 barrels,
of 375 pounds each, valued at nearly $40,000,000,! and the estimated
production in 1913 was between 40,000,000 and 45,000,000 barrels.
Cartels among producers control between 50 and 60 per cent of the
total output and about 80 per cent of the normal exports? A general
 German cartel for the cement industry has been impossible,
because of variety of .interests and price differences in the various
sections and the difficulty of equalizing freight and transportation
costs; but the industry, nevertheless, has been quite effectively centralized
 through the formation of cartels among the sectional groups
of producers in the Empire and agreements between these cartels.
The number of factories in the various groups is not large, and to a
considerable degree production is centralized in the hands of the great
stock companies.
During the nineties building activity and large over-sea exports
encouraged the formation of numerous cement cartels. These were
mostly loose price agreements, and comprised the following eight
producing groups: (1) the Stettin, (2) the Silesian, (3) the Mérkische,
(4) the Saxon or Middle-German, (5) the lower Elbe, (6) the Hanoverian,
 (7) the Rhenish-Westphalian, and (8) the South-German.
This same division still exists at the present time.* Among the prinsipal
 cartels are® the Union of Silesian Portland Cement Manufacturers
 (Verband Schlesischer Zement-Fabriken), the Selling
Union of the Middle-German Cement Works (Mitteldeutsches Zement
Syndikat), a limited liability company, the North-West-Middle-German
 Cement Syndicate, in form a stock company, the Hanoverian
Selling Association (Verkaufsvereinigung Hannoverischer Portland
Zement Fabriken), which in 1914 changed its form to a limited corporation,
 the Rhenish-Westphalian Cement Syndicate (Rheinisch-Westfilisches
 Zement Syndikat), a limited liability company operating
"| Statistisches Jahrbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich, 1914, p. 1186.
:Pt. II, p. 43.
JPL. I, p. 38.
iE. Madelung, Die Entwicklung d. Deutschen PortlandeZement-Industrie (Leipsic), 1913, p. 18 fol.
+ Pt. II, pp. 38 fol., and Volkswirtschaftliche Chronik, February, 1914.