86 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

established many years ago. Such associations of buyers as may
exist in various lines of raw products are not organized to buy
American goods alone, but goods of the same kind produced in other
parts of the world.
When associations of dealers have difficulties with large German
manufacturing cartels they are in the market for foreign goods.
Such opportunities occasionally appear and are regularly reported by
consular officers as trade opportunities. Naturally it is impossible
to tell when difficulties between German cartels and the local buyers
will develop. At present no difficulties of this nature have been
reported in the German trade publications or by American firms
interested in such commodities.
The following two illustrations will show something of the nature
and methods of German buying combinations which have come to
notice in the actual marketing of American goods:
(1) A prominent American manufacturer of low and medium
priced watches discovered that if he attempted to sell his goods
wherever he could find a market the German buying combinations
of watchmakers would refuse to handle his goods. After seriously
considering this problem the American firm decided that the buying
combination was not strong enough to do much damage and that
larger sales could be made by selling to department stores and such
dealers as would be willing to buy. The German Watch Makers’
Association conducted a vigorous campaign in their trade journals
and elsewhere, but did not succeed in driving out the American firm.
Year by year more watch dealers bought the American product, so
that before the war broke out a very lucrative business had been
established in spite of the efforts of the German Watch Makers’
Association. This association would have acted in the same way
toward any other foreign firm which used the same kind of selling
policy.
(2) A prominent American firm manufacturing heating apparatus
 reports that occasionally combinations of a half a dozen or
more buyers are formed to procure lower prices. It is a policy of
the American firm in such case either not to sell to such an association
 at all or to break it up by offering special rebates and attractive
prices to a prominent member, so that the wholesale buyers’ organization
 would go to pieces. The same tactics are also used by the
German competitors in this line, and consequently the associations
of buyers have not been firmly established.
Most of the associations of buyers described above are detrimental
to the importation of American goods, particularly those organized
for the control of raw products, such as cotton and copper, but beneficial,
 associations of importers of American goods could be formed
for their mutual protection. So far as is known no such associations
exist at present in Germany. American goods are generally sold by
branches, many of which operate their own factories; agents, who
operate general distribution depots; and wholesalers, dealers, and
jobbers, who buy directly on their own account. In Germany these
buyers are well disseminated throughout the entire country. Groups
could be gathered together in Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, and a few
larger places for protective purposes.