EXCERPTS FROM HEARINGS. 261
firmation by an examination of the records of the Department of Commerce
and others. :
We have reason to believe that there are combinations there which fix the
buying and the price. We know that we rarely meet the buyer and the consumer,
 We know that it is handled through intermediaries, who make arrangements
 for sales six months or eight months in advance.
We know that everyone we came in contact with is a bear upon the price,
and has no interest in the lumber industry or any other industry, except to
get it at as low a price as possible, ¥
We know that in Australia the tariffs are so framed as to take up lumber
as against the manufactured product.
D. E. Skinner, president of the Port Blakely Mill Company, Port
Blakely, Wash., speaking of Australian lumber dealers, said:

The information we receive is this, that after they have formed their. selling
agency, as they call it down there, which is also a buying agency, necessarily
if they can fix a price at which they sell after they buy it in cargo lots, I assume
they also fix the price about what they will pay for it.
We learn from those who are selling lumber there; we learn from contact
with the trade, that if one man is not acceptable to that combination we had
better not sell him, otherwise we will simply have to depend on his trade
instead of the trade of the greater number who are in this combination.
We have the representations of the Australian merchants who come here,
and they say, “ We do not hesitate to tell you we are making two pounds a
thousand on your lumber and do not want to handle it at any less.” And
that is as much or more than we get f. 0. b.

(b) Effect on American Export Trade.
John D. Ryan, president of the Amalgamated Copper Co., New
York City, said:

In studying the effect of competitive selling in foreign countries upon our
business—the copper business—I long ago came to the conclusion that this
country, which is the great storehouse of the natural resources of the world, undoubtedly,
 has practically since its beginning thrown away its substance, robbed
itself of its mines, its forests, its soil, and sold its natural resources in competition
 with itself practically; one forest tract with another, one mine with another,
 and one farm with another, in the severest and bitterest kind of competition
 everywhere in the world. It seemed very simple to me that that was
the greatest economic mistake, perhaps, that this country has ever made, and
it continues; it continues until to-day. There has been absolutely no change
In it.

Five or six concerns control, say, 80 per cent of the copper business of the
country. But under the existing laws those five or six concerns are driven to
such competition, one with the other, that * * * the result has been that
in 10 years ending with 1913, * * * the domestic buyers paid, delivered
at New York Harbor or in the Connecticut Valley, 83/100 cent per pound—
practically seven-eighths of a cent per pound—more than the foreign buyers
paid. delivered at the foreign ports.

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We sell large concerns in Europe. It is a daily occurrence to get a cable
from our representative saying, “So and so is in the market for 1,000 tons,”
or “3,000,” or “4,000 tons,” or whatever the quantity may be, “and will
give us business on equal terms,” He will say, “ A,” who is our competitor, “is
quoting 10 shillings under us.” Now, A’s office is only two blocks away from
my office here, and yet I don’t dare to call him on the telephone to ask whether
that consumer in England, or in Germany, is telling the truth about that
quotation or not; and the chances are 9 out of 10 that he is not, and that
he is only telling our representative that somebody in England is quoting 10
shillings under him for the purpose simply of trying to bring our man down to
that basis, without having a quotation in hand. But we are fighting one another,
 and the consequences are that the buyer gets the advantage. We can not
even compare notes as to what our prices are. The practice to-day in the trace,
if the man wants business, is to send an open order—a carte blanche—to his
representative abroad, and say, “ Meet the competition.”