302 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

Hon from a comparison of prices for foreign products as to what domestic
prices would be for similar products. If manufactured products, such as we
have under consideration, were like a staple commodity, it might be different.
We have no fixed prices, and on each inquiry we make a separate price.
The probability that export combinations would extend their operations
 to a restraint” of domestic trade was an objection urged by
John Crosby, of the Washburn-Crosby Co., Minneapolis, Minn. He
said:

Is it not true that, human nature being such as it is, it would be very diffisult
 for the same men to try to pool issues and compare prices and do all
those things that we are forbidden to do by law in this country, and that
we do not do; and to do that on a thousand barrels of export and have ourselves
 so situated as to do that on the export business that we would not do
on the domestic?
It is conceivable that it should be done, but it looks to me or to us—other
millers may feel differently, because I have not talked on this thing—but it
seems to us that just so surely as we had that power and began to do it, all
that would back up into domestic trade, or some of it would, and we, or some
of us, would surely be under suspicion of doing in the domestic trade what
ought not to be done under the law and what we do not do under the law.
Bernard J. Rothwell, president of the Bay State Milling Co., Boston.
 Mass.. said:

In granting, through modification of existing law, such freedom of action
in foreign markets care should be exercised to guard against any permission to
resufoe in domestic markets those pernicious practices of unfair and purposely
destructive competition which American public sentiment had unequivocally
rondemned.

F. A. Somers, president of Somers &amp; Co., dealers in grain, hay, etc.,
San Francisco, said:
To be perfectly frank, I think human nature is so weak that there is danger
ahead on that basis, but if it could be done on foreign trade alone I believe it
would be of vast benefit to the industry here.
In this connection John D. Ryan, president of the Amalgamated
Copper Co., New York City, said:
When you permit a combination, or price agreement, or anything else, in
foreign trade, and you don’t permit it in domestic trade, the man has got to
violate the law to make a combination in domestic trade. Now, if a man is
going to violate the law—if he is that kind of a man—the man will violate
it anyway. But I say to you, that I want to be protected against the man
who will make a sub-rosa agreement to violate the law; and I won't violate
it, simply because I have the right to combine for export—I won't violate it
n domestic trade for the reason, if for no other, that I want to make very sure
»f holding my advantage in the export trade and not losing it by doing the
thing I am prohibited from doing in the domestic trade. And, furthermore, the
question of whether it is going to affect unfavorably the matter of price in our
domestic trade is something to which we have given a great deal of thought.
Remember, you do not sanction any restriction in production that is absolutely
prohibited by law. There is no agreement restricting production. If there is a
orice agreement abroad that raises prices abroad, and there should be overproduction,
 has it not got to be marketed, if that price is maintained abroad?
Has it not got to be marketed at a sacrifice anywhere in this country; and
won’t the consumer in this country get the benefit of that surplus that has
to be marketed at a lower price, whatever it is? The competition exists here,
and not abroad. The surplus has got to be sold, even at a concession.
W. H. Heulings, jr., vice president of J. G. Brill &amp; Co., car manufacturers.
 Philadelphia, Pa., said:

I do not believe that, it would in any way, conflict with our domestic work.
If you have a business large enough to subdivide, take your foreign business
in one hand and your domestic business in the other, and keep them far apart,
vou will still have plenty to do.