280 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,

evidence of an organized selling in foreign countries, a combination might
prove to be helpful; but my own feeling is that the most valuable, the most
profitable foreign trade which we will develop, in addition to that which arises
out of the exports of our natural products, is specialties; and, in the production
and in the marketing of specialties, we have nothing in particular to fear from
cartels or other organized methods of selling, since the cartels are practically
all confined to staple products, in which no particular corfcern has or can
develop good will.
A. L. Mills, president of the First National Bank, Portland, Oreg.,
in connection with the lumber industry, said :
It would seem to me that there are some things that could be done to help
that industry if they could be permitted in some way to cooperate; not an
legal combination, but a combination which would be legal, which would
enable them to pool their products in some way and enable these mills to run.
At the present time almost every one of them is running at a dead loss or
is idle:

O. M. Clarke, president of the Clarke-Wilson Lumber Co., Portland,
 Oreg., speaking of the inability of any single mill to maintain
selling agencies abroad, said:
A single manufacturer could not do it, for the reason that they go to so many
different markets. Now, to take care of our stock, for instance, we would
take a China order and an Australian order and a United Kingdom order, and
perhaps a West Coast order, that would take care of all our different grades,
the higher grades going to the United Kingdom and the lower going to China.
So we could not afford to keep men in each one of four or five markets. If
we could sell all our product, say, in China, we might afford to sell it to keep
a man there, but that would only take care of our low grade.
C. J. Smith, vice president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce,
Seattle, Wash., as to the lumber business, said:
We are greatly handicapped in reaching the foreign countries, because, by
the divisions and subdivisions of the ownership of the timber and of the great
number of mills, there are no very great combinations of capital engaged in
this business, and the expense of ascertaining and soliciting business abroad
Is greater than any one of these companies or any one of these mills can undertake
 by ourselves. The consequence is that we must have, to a certain extent,
some combination which will enable them to divide those expenses and also
to provide in a large way the supply of lumber that they may obtain as the
result of those solicitations.
In speaking of creosoted Douglas fir, H. E. Horrocks, manager of
the Pacific Creosoting Co., Seattle, Wash., said in part as follows:

Fifteen million feet of creosoted Douglas fir sleepers were marketed in
India in 1914, and we know there is a big field there. There is that market ;
it must be developed in a big way; it can not be done by any individual company.
 Our company, which represents about 40 per cent of the creosoting
capacity of the Northwest, could not afford to do it.
Victor H. Beckman, of Seattle, Wash., engaged in the timberland
business, in his brief stated that of the imports into Great Britain
in 1918:

Seventy-five per cent of these imports were from Russia, Sweden, and Norway,
 and only about 30,000,000 feet from the Pacific coast, valued at about
$400,000.
The delivery prices of this lumber averaged from $10.41 to $40.67, with
rst quality lumber as high as $115 per 1,000 feet. An analysis shows that
Pacific coast lumber can compete, after the war is over, with 40 per cent of
these imports. To do this, however, will require the establishment of great
distributing yards in all the important centers of Europe and the erection of
great planing mills to work up the lumber into grades required by the consumers.
 In no other way can our lumber obtain a permanent foothold. There
are only a few firms on the Pacific coast so situated as to finance an under-