EXCERPTS FROM HEARINGS, 281

taking of this magnitude, and therefore the Commission should allow the cargo
mills to pool issues, as has been suggested by the lumbermen, under the supervision
 of the Commission so as to prevent restraint of trade. In other words
the European field is attractive, but it can only be exploited by cooperative
effort and combination of capital.

Referring te the apathy of Michigan manufacturers toward foreign
irade, Hal H. Smith, counsel for the Michigan Manufacturers’ Association,
 Detroit, Mich., stated :

Two main causes appear as the reasons why these industries have not reached
out after export trade. One is their ignorance of the possibilities of that trade.
The second and the greatest is their inability, alone and unaided, to either create
or finance an organization competent to handle their products In foreign countries.
 A single furniture plant at Grand Rapids, manufacturing chairs, can see
no profit in an attempt to distribute its product in New Zealand. The business
it’ could secure is not large enough to justify the expense and the risk, and its
domestic business is not sufficient to carry such expense and such risk. If it
were to combine with other furniture factories in Grand Rapids to create a
joint agency, through which they could together market their product, they are
confronted with the possibility of creating a combination in violation of the
Sherman Act, thereby making each liable to the penalties of that law.
Mr. Smith believes combinations of the sort could market abroad
the surplus production here. As to the result of this, he declared :

The presence in the domestic market of a surplus may depress prices, but the
removal of that surplus to foreign markets can, of itself, give the publie no
reason for complaint. For the public, surely, has no right to the continuance of
prices brought about by a production so excessive and illogical that it will
destroy the producer. =

George W. Harris, president of the Trustees’ Sinking Fund of the
city of Cincinnati, thinks that the law should be amended so as to
permit competition between our exporters and those of foreign countries.
 He said, in part:
They can not do that unless they are allowed by statute to form pools or
combinations to fix the selling prices for foreign business, because all the
civilized countries, with which they have to compete, have that privilege.

*

How can our shippers of coal sell, in competition with the shippers of coal in
England and Germany, where the shippers of coal In Germany are permitted
and are encouraged to form combinations for the establishment of prices for
foreign countries? They do it, as we know, and they also do it for domestic
consumption ; but that is opposed to the principle of the American Government.
W..d. McGee. of the Carbon Fuel Co., Cincinnati. Ohio. stated :

The export business is one that would require foreign selling organizations
 to go about it in the right way; and that is too big an undertaking
for the average coal-producing company to attempt singly, and combinations of
such producing companies, pools of such producing companies, would be necessary,
 in my opinion, in order to make any appreciable headway in the export
ousiness. That is the way it is handled in England. I understand. and also in
Germany.

J. Ogden Armour, of Armour &amp; Co., Chicago, Ill, thought combination
 among manufacturers of staple products an advantage, as is
shown in the following:

It would seem that serious study might profitably be given the question of
gyndicate or trading company organization for the sale in foreign countries
of many of our products, such as coal. lumber, and phosphate rock, where
one organization in each line could attend to selling, chartering, insurance,
credits, advertising, and so on, avoiding duplication in expense and giving the
American manufacturer lower delivered costs and a better chance to compete
successfully for foreign trade.