270 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

0 supply the foreign manufacturer and carry that foreign manufacturer; I have
sarticularly in mind the South American dealer; so that we could give him a
reasonable line of credit.
I submitted a plan to one of the financial houses here looking to some such
organization. They were afraid to take hold of it, owing to the attitude of the
Government at that time. It seems to me, however, that if such a plan could
ne approved or countenanced by the Government, whereby the American manufacturers
 could unite in an organization to reach, particularly the South
American trade, and perhaps the European trade, supplying them, for instance,
with their hotel equipment, supplying homes in South America with Americanmade
 products on the basis where the South American dealer could handle it,
‘here would be a great field for the American furniture, where to-day there is
practically none. There is practically no American furniture going abroad
except in some specialty lines. I believe there are some desks being sold in
London, but, generally speaking, the furniture industry is very poorly represented
 in foreign fields.
I believe this has already been touched upon to-day, but if this commission
wuld recommend that permission be granted for such an organization to be
formed, I believe it would be quite possible to develop a demand for American
‘urniture.
Frank A. Preston, assistant manager of the W. D. Allison Co.,
[ndianapolis, Ind., dealers in physicians’ office equipment, said:

We have rather felt that if we get a table or chair shipped into a foreign
country it is probably imitated and made there much cheaper than we could
set it to them; by the time we add the freight and the duty on it, it makes it
rather an expensive proposition for the doctor. For one reason, we have not
been able to get in direct contact with the doctors. We have felt that to get
‘he sales in foreign countries we ought to have a representative, almost direct
from the factory, who knows the business, and is able to call on the doctors;
and it is too expensive for that.

We have been contemplating joining with three or four other houses of kindred
 subjects and lines for the medical profession and sending a man through
the South: but that has not been fully developed yet.

4. ADVANTAGES OF AMERICAN EXPORT COMBINATIONS.
(a) Competing Lines.
W. S. Kies, manager of the foreign trade department of the
National City Bank, of New York, said:
One significant thing * * * is that the total value of our exports of manu-‘actures
 from 1900 to 1914—and I have a couple of five-year periods here—
shows that the four groups of iron and steel products, refined copper, refined
mineral oils, and agricultural implements, constitute a total of 51.1 per cent in
value of our total exports. In other words, the four large corporations in
this country—the Steel Corporation, the Standard Oil Co., the International
Harvester Co., and the Copper Co.—have by some means or other been enabled
-0 concentrate and intensify their efforts so that their products represent a total
average, over a period of 14 years, of 51.1 per cent of our entire manufactured
articles.
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As bearing on the’ necessity of some new means whereby the resources of
the various concerns interested can be pooled, I might say that even in this
matter of giving credits there is competition, due to the inability or the lack
of an opportunity to get together and to arrive at an understanding of the
situation. I have several letters from concerns in various lines—one, in particular,
 from a concern in the cotton line, a very large concern, in which
they say:
“We wish there was some way for the people in our line who are working in
Youth America to get together on this matter of credits. We started in with an
idea that we were going to give credits, and gave four months. Some of our
competitors are offering six and nine months, and some even a year,” -