SPECIAL BEPORTS FOR FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION. 91

being very numerously in every form, and particularly in the form
of international agreements, which become increasingly popular.
If capitalistic combinations were slower in securing a foothold in
Great Britain than in the United States and Germany, the cause
probably must be sought in habits of greater conservatism, which
apply to business undertakings in general. Macrosty remarks that
something like a general movement to control competition first began
to be felt in the eighties. “After numerous experiments with all
kinds of terminable associations,” he states, “ manufacturers, sick of
warfare, turned to amalgamation of their interests, and followed in
the same course as their brethren in the United States, only a little
later. The first stimulus was given by the success of Messrs. J. &amp; P.
Coates in 1896, and the great development of 1899-1900 was distinctly
 imitative of the parallel development in America, just as the
subsequent disfavor was to some extent due to the temporary financial
 failure of some of the great trans-Atlantic trusts.”
Existing combinations.—Existing combinations in Great Britain
are found in the iron and steel industries as amalgamations and associations;
 in the extractive industries; in the textile industries; in the
chemical industries; in grain milling; in the tobacco and liquor
trades; in the transport industries; and in a variety of miscellaneous
industries. - Unaided by tariffs of an oppressive character, unhampered
 by special legislation, they depend for their success in the
United Kingdom upon their efficiency as means of production and
distribution.
Among the well-known British combinations are—
Messrs. J. &amp; P. Coats ($hread), as a type of complete control of
output by the actual purchase of subsidiary companies.
The Chilean Nitrate Association, as a type of regulation of output.
Dunderland Iron Co., as a type of companies united to obtain a
common and cheap supply of raw materials for its members.
Lever &amp; Co. (soap), as a type of almost complete control of output
through the purchase of rival companies, yet nevertheless using no
methods to prevent competition.
International trusts—Macrosty, in his work, gives all the available
details respecting the above and a great many other combinations
and it would be futile in a special report to repeat the many facts
which he has set forth so elaborately and accurately. He has not,
however, dwelt at any great length upon the international trust, a
form of organization recently come into favor and more or less known
in every great commercial country. The extremely ingenious methods
by which the international trusts are formed and so manipulated that
a very limited amount of capital enables the trust builders to keep
them in hand is fully explained in a translation supplied by the
present writer under the title of “International control of the metal
trade,” forwarded to the Department of State from Hamburg in
1918. The facts in this report were assembled and studied by a wellknown
 German university professor and merit careful reading.
Quite recently the metal trade trust came before the British prize
court, the trust people claiming that certain seized goods were owned
by Messrs. Henry R. Merton &amp; Co. (Litd.), a British firm. The president
 of the court in his judgment held that Messrs. Henry R. Merton
&amp; Co. (Ltd.), of London; the Australian Metal Co. (Ltd.), of
London: the Metall Gesellschaft, of Frankfurt: Messrs. Vivian