CONCLUSIONS,

378

in those where no single concern towers above its fellows, there are
numerous small and moderate-sized producers who act separately
in conducting their export business. It thus results from the conditions
 of the organization of industry abroad and at home that in the
great foreign commercial countries American companies must often
compete separately against combinations of foreign producers and
must often sell separately to combinations of foreign buyers.
This condition is repeated when American and foreign manufacturers
 compete in the markets of countries alien to both, as when
American manufacturers compete with German or English in
South America. Here, again, individual American exporters must
encounter the united opposition of foreign manufacturers in many
important lines of trade. In fact, special cartels and syndicates are
often formed in European countries expressly for export business.
The combinations can afford long and costly campaigns to gain
foreign markets, and they can grant favorable terms to purchasers.
Moreover, the chief foreign trading nations not.only have a distinct
advantage over the United States in ocean shipping under their own
flags, better foreign-trade banking and credit organizations, and
greater investments in less developed parts of the world, but also it
is their policy to unite these various interests with their industrial
combinations into most effective organizations for the vigorous
promotion of export business.
These are the salient facts concerning the character and prevalence
of cooperation and combination among foreign manufacturers,
producers, and dealers. Foreign concerns cooperate in both home
and export trade to a greater extent than American concerns do.
The advantage and necessity of preventing such combinations in the
American domestic trade is fully recognized by the Commission, but
the export trade presents, in its opinion, a different problem.
The need of cooperation in American export trade.—It is apparent
from this statement of the character of the business organization which
Americans must compete against in foreign markets that this country’s
 organization for export trade must be strengthened if its manufacturers
 and producers are to compete on more nearly equal terms in
the commerce of the world. Obviously most of the individual
American exporters, handicapped by dependence upon foreign shipping
 and foreign financial institutions, and forced single handed to
oppose united foreign competitors, are at a material disadvantage.
In international trade the competitive conditions have been largely
in favor of the foreign concerns, particularly when opposed to the
smaller American exporters. Cooperation solely for export business
will go far to permit the development of stronger American organizations,
 and may be particularly advantageous to smaller concerns.