SPECIAL REPORTS FOR FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION. 215
sunsiion to the consuls and the European and native purchasers
in China.
(12) Members can obtain business from their fellow members.
There is a growing fenemicy for members to place orders with each
other, and the secretary is often applied to for the names of members
who manufacture some particular article.
Special report of Consul C. E. Gauss, in charge of Consulate General at
Shanghai, China, December 1. 1915.
(Note.—Consul General Thomas Sammons, of Shanghai, was in the United
States at the time the commission’s inquiries were sent to the consuls and
therefore did not have an opportunity to prepare a report on the topics submitted.
 He conferred at length with members and representatives of the commission,
 however, and in this manner furnished much information of value in
the preparation of the report.—FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION.)
This report is intended to cover China proper, excluding Manchuria
 and Hongkong.
Combinations, syndicates, ete., native to China.—So far as has
been shown by the limited investigation possible by this consulate
general, there may be said to be no combinations, cartels, or syndisates
 of manufacturers native to China, whether Chinese companies
or foreign companies organized for operation in this field.
China’s manufacturing industries are still in the early stages of
development, and while there are a number of mills and factories of
various sorts in operation, there is as yet no combination of manufacturing
 efforts meriting attention.
China has, of course, its home industries—the manufacturing carried
 on in small shops in a small way by the natives—which are of
interest, and most of the consular officers to whom requests have been
addressed for information and suggestions for this report have
pointed out—purely as a matter of interest—the guild system in
China, whereby the native crafts have combined in a measure for
their own protection and regulation. .
Of the more prominent manufacturing concerns operating in
China, none of which individually may be said to be of any predominant
 importance as controlling the trade in their respective
lines, some data as to their capitalization and operations may be
found in the China Stock and Share Handbook. Attention is directed
 to the companies under the following classifications: Section
7, Industrial undertakings and manufacturing companies; section
11, Mining companies; and section 14, Spinning and weaving comanies.

° In cotton mills there is an organization known as the Cotton Mill
Owners’ Association, which might be described as similar to organizations
 of the same character in the United States, whose efforts
might be devoted to such objects as recommendations for special
tariff or taxation treatment, or, as at Shanghai, toward a cotton antiwiiliaration
 house for the testing of cotton received from native
sellers.
The importance of these various companies in a sense of combination
 does not lie in China in any combination or syndication of the
companies themselves, but in their control, by management or by
holding of the majority of stock, by the large foreign trading houses
such, for instance, Ya. Matheson &amp; Co. (Ltd.), who are the
general managers, and probably the majority owners, of three cotton
 mills at Shanghai with a total of something around 100,000