332 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

bureau was maintained and the member companies were held together
 merely by price and other selling agreements, each company
making its sales as it saw fit, within the limitations of the eartel
The primary endeavor of the organization was not to restrict output,
 but to find an outlet in more distant markets, foreign and
domestic, for all excess production so that the local or natural
market might never be encumbered by an excessive supply. Prices
in the outside markets were usually lower than in the local market,
 the compensation being found in the greater stability of prices
in the local market, where the quantities each producer offered for
sale were limited by the cartel. Minimum prices were set for all
noal except that exported. The cartel determined and enforced a
classification for grades of coal. Bounties were paid for sales made
abroad or in certain regions of France outside the local market.
Also the cartel gave an export bounty or rebate to the metal and
glass industries of France in the form of a reduced price for coal
ased in manufacturing goods exported by these industries. -
Prior to the war American coal exports to France were spasmodic
 and very small, and as France normally consumes more
coal than it produces there was little likelihood that American and
French coal would compete in other foreign markets. The present
German occupation of part of the coal regions in northern France is
said to have cut the annual coal production of the country to about
20,000,000 tons and the normal imports from Belgium are stopped,
so that France must procure additional coal from new sources. High
freight rates are at present the greatest difficulty in the way of obtaining
 coal from the United States.
GREAT BRITAIN.

Of the 320,000,000 short tons of coal mined in Great Britain in
1913 Yorkshire produced 83,000,000 tons, northeastern England
(Durham and Northumberland) 63,000,000 tons, South Wales
64,000,000 tons, Scotland 47,000,000 tons, Lancashire 28,000,000 tons,
the Midlands 27,000,000 tons, and other lesser fields the remainder.
Thus the South Wales field produced only one-fifth of the total, but
these mines are located near tidewater and their coals are of
peculiarly high quality for steam uses. In consequence South Wales
shipped 40 per cent of all the coal exported from Great Britain in
that year, her exports totaling 84,000,000 tons, nearly all of
which went out from the three ports of Cardiff, Newport, and Swansea.
 Moreover, so far as American export coal trade is concerned,
South Wales is much more #tnportant than Newcastle or other eastern
districts. The latter, shipping through the North Sea ports, export to
the North European markets, in which American coals do not attempt
to compete, but most of the English coal shipped to the Mediterranean