352 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

ducers, but that the prices should be fixed by the syndicate. One of
the chief aims of organization was the purchase in common of the
Owen patent machine process and its gradual installation. Also, the
European makers combined to safeguard their capacity for competition
 with the American industry. }
Petroleum.—The principal international combination in petroleum
is that of the Royal Dutch-Shell group. There are two groups of
interests which occupy thé most prominent positions in the world’s
petroleum industry. They are the American group known as the
Standard Oil interests, and its great foreign competitor, the Royal
Dutch-Shell interests. The Royal Dutch-Shell petroleum combination,
 was formed in 1907 by the amalgamation of the Royal Dutch
Petroleum Co. with the Shell Transport &amp; Trading Co.
The growth of the capital stock of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.
and the Shell Transport &amp; Trading Co. in the past 15 years has been
rapid. In 1901 the capital of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. was
$2,600,000; in 1907, it was $20,600,000, and by the end of 1913 it had
outstanding about $35,000,000 of capital stock. In 1901 the capital
of the Shell Transport &amp; Trading Co. was $14,580,000; in 1907 it was
$17,100,000; and by the end of 1913 it had outstanding $29,249,905.
The combined earnings for the two companies during 1912 were
$16,153,000, which was about 27 per cent on their stock outstanding
in that year.?
Previous to 1911 the Royal Dutch-Shell combination had been
gradually spreading out from its original center of operations, the
Dutch East Indies. Ostensibly as a result of a severe price-cutting
war which took place in 1911 when not only its European markets
but even its Oriental markets were threatened by American oil, the
Royal Dutch-Shell interests entered on a policy of obtaining production
 in all the principal oil fields of the world, of uniting with if,
sither through actual combination of ownership, contracts, or the
maintenance of common policies, many of the other European-owned
companies producing in those fields, and of marketing its refined
products everywhere? As a result, before the war the products of
the Royal Dutch-Shell combination were sold throughout Europe, in
the United States, Canada, South America, South Africa, Australia,
and the Orient. At the annual meeting of his company in 1913, Sir
Marcus Samuel, the head of the Shell Transport &amp; Trading Co. outlined
 the poli¢y in the following words: “The business is world-wide,
and we are determined that the great distributing organization which
we have created shall not be dependent upon any one field, or upon
any one country, or upon any one government. We shall endeavor

1 Réforme Economique, 1907, vol. 162, pp. 1276 and 1277.
2 Petroleum Gazette, May, 1914, pp. 10-12.
: Moniteur du Péirole Roumain, Feb. 1, 1913, p. 162: and Petroleum Gazette, May, 1914, pp. 10-12.