EXCERPTS FROM HEARINGS, 299

While we might enter into an agreement with our competitors here at home
‘hat we would stand on price, and he could work with his agent just the same
as we do, that might be advantageous in that way, to have a home organization;
 but as to making any effort to disposing of our products through a cosperative
 organization in foreign fields, we would not consider it at all.
W. W. Knight, of the Long-Knight Lumber Co., Indianapolis,
Ind., said:
I do not think such a thing [a cooperative association] is possible in the
lumber business, because lumbermen, as a rule, are prefty keen competitors,
and they are not always trusting the other fellow, to be frank about it. I can
do better getting the business and doing the business myself than I can by doing
it through somebody else. That is about it. It is a matter of self-interest.
In this connection Isadore Jacobs, president of the California
Canneries Co.. San Francisco, said :

It seems to me that there would not be any way in which you could control
the cooperative representatives, and there would always be that suspicion in
the minds of the manufacturers that they might not be getting a square deal in
the selling of the goods.
Albert E. Castle, member of the firm of Castle Bros., dried-fruit
axporters, San Francisco, said:

Combinations to fix prices, I do not think, would ever work so far as foreign
business is concerned, because domestic business would enter into it at once
and we would not be in a position where we could combine on the foreign prices
and not on the domestic prices.
John Crosby, of the Washburn-Crosby Co., Yinneapoiy, Minn,
expressed a doubt as to whether the competing millers of the country
could be persuaded to organize against foreign buyers. He said:

Now, I am almost ashamed to say it, and it ought not to be so, but the fact
's that the millers in this country have been so used to a pretty ruthless competition
 that they do not trust each other very far, and anything of that sort
would be very difficult to arrange.

Edgar H. Evans, president and treasurer of the Acme Evans Co.,
Indianapolis, Ind., manufacturers of flour. said:
The competition between the mills is dependent so much ‘on local conditions,
he marging are established by markets and conditions that are common to
as all, and the ground is so well understood as to the method of doing business
that, except for the diminishing of competition, which, of course, we would all
like to see. the matter of cooperation has not been very largely brought out.

T. J. Thorsen, Dresijens of the Washington Shoe Manufacturing
Co., Seattle, Wash., when asked whether a combination of manufacturers
 of conflicting lines would be practicable, said:

{ do not think that would be practicable. Just the same as if you were in
the wholesale shoe business and I was your salesman, and I carried a line
from another house just exactly the same as you manufactured. You want
me to put all my efforts on your line. don’t you?
Charles H. Jones, president of the Commonwealth Shoe &amp; Leather
Co.. Boston. Mass.. said:

{f a salesman was carrying my shoes and another manufacturer’s shoes, and
if he did not sell mine, I should be pretty sure to say he was influenced improperly
 by the other man.

Ernest G. Howes, president of the Howes Bros. Co., leather manufacturers,
 Boston, Mass., said :
It is quite a question, in my mind, whether a permanent
ould be established in any foreign country made ump of

selling agency
manufacturers