26 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
geany if Government officers have a voice in the deliberations of the
oal Syndicate Co.
Relations to other business interests in Germany.—As has been
noted under the Steel Works Union, the three products which are
the foundation of the entire industry of the country—coal, iron, and
steel—are closely united by interlocking directorates. In every combine
 pertaining to these three fundamental branches of the industry
the same great firms constantly appear and exercise their influence.
This is due to the fact that so many firms have gradually concentrated
 all the steps of production from ore to finished product under
one roof, so to speak. Therefore a man like Thyssen, as an owner
of coal mines, is in the Coal Syndicate; as an owner of smelters, is
in the Iron Syndicate; as a manufacturer of steel ingots and rails, is
in the Steel Works Union; and as a manufacturer of woven wire, is
in the Woven Wire Syndicate, and so on. As mentioned above, the
Steel Verband controls about half of the coal products of the Ruhr
district, partly for its own use and partly for the Syndicate. The
Pig Iron Syndicate is connected with the Coal Syndicate through
the many so-called “furnace mines,” coal mines which operate
smelters. These unions, however, are constantly being broken up
and remodeled to meet the difficulties arising in the various branches
of the German heavy industries. .
The results attained by combination.—The result of the Coal Syndicate
 has apparently been beneficial. It has abolished cutthroat
competition without at any time striving for unduly high profits.
It has taken up the varying demands of the open market made upon
an industry, hi ie’ by its very nature has an inelastic rate of production.
 In the years when the demand of the home market exceeded
the supply it has itself supplied the demand byebuying coal from
abroad and thus prevented foreign competition from getting control
of the home market. It has marketed surplus abroad in years of
slack demand at home, thus keeping the mines working at an efficient
rate of production. By regulating prices for an entire year at a
time it has practically abolished speculation and steadied the market.
It has made it possible to greatly increase the wages of its members’
employees. It has accomplished a great economic saving by simplifying
 the marketing of coal to the consumer and by concentrating
and organizing transportation routes. It has brought back to the
iron, coal, and steel industries the profits necessary to their healthful
growth. Prices have increased in the 20 years from 1893 to 1912
about 60 per cent for bituminous coal, 50 per cent for smelter coke,
20 per cent for’ gas coal; yet dividends have not increased to any
marked extent, the additional price being due to higher wages and
the law of increasing prices, or, as some put it, to the decline in the
purchasing power of mgney,
Concerns outside the Syndicate—In the first 10 years of the Syndicate,
 from 1893 to 1903, it had a monopoly of the coal production of
Germany, except for a few south German mines of small production.
 From 1893 to 1900 the outsiders increased from 12.55 per cent to
14.37 per cent. The outsiders used the economic depression following
1900 to cut into the Syndicate at a rapid rate, and increased their participation
 in the entire coal production from 14.87 per cent to 17.75 per
cent. In 1903 the Coal Syndicate Co. was reorganized and included
all the smelter mines or furnace mines, except Freie Vogel und