358 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
An exporter writes:

In practice I think it has been found that these combinations lack the painstaking
 and detailed care that the individual devotes to his business. The
technical knowledge of the individual manufacturer is more likely to yield
results, even through the medium of the commission merchant, than the scattered
 and sometimes desultory efforts of a combination.
A “student of trusts and labor? concurs:

No cooperative organization can compete with the individual manufacturer
maintaining publicity system and especially trained sales organization backed
up by knowledge of use and limitations of product. Enterprise, interest, and
energy lacking, as success does not depend on one manufacturer's goods.
Danger of red tape.
Similar replies were received from a lawyer who has interested
himself in the matter, from the editor of an industrial magazine, and
others.
2. DANGER oF ABUSE—An accountant who has studied political
economy mentions:
The disadvantage of confining any particular trade to persons who should
monopolize it to themselves through ownership of patent and similar rights.

An assistant professor of history points out another possible abuse:
Old experienced houses might not do so well absolutely as through the
machinery they now use; possibility of greater loss through mismanagement
of a large organization than of a small one.
Several other dangers occur to an assistant professor of economics:

It is always possible that in gn association a little group may get control and
work things to their own advantage. The association might be apparently open
to all on equal terms. The minority, or even the majority, in the face of a
powerful minority well organized, might not secure fair treatment in the association,
 and yet might not be able to get along well without it. * * * the
association method might actually result in some restraint on the vigorous and
enterprising and so tend to check the development of the best and most efficient
producers.
8. GENERAL ECONOMIC OBJECTIONS.— Would raise domestic prices.—
An assistant professor of economics notes:
Disadvantages: Maintenance of domestic prices above foreign prices, where
the combination, protected by a tariff wall. is seeking to drive out competitors
In foreign fields.

Disturb economic balance.—This objection comes from a consulting
 engineer and economist:

The disadvantages would be likely to be that such combinations would only
work one way; that is to say, with relation to exports only, and not to imports
as well, so that the economic balances of. our country and any other given
country might be actually hurt rather than helped.
Would involve. legalizing domestic combines—The reply of an
assistant professor of economics is typical of the attitude of a number
 of respondents:

If export combinations are given legal standing, how avoid some recognition
to domestic combinations?
Commission houses can be made effective—A professor of political
science suggests:
The answer would depend upon the organization of the commission houses,
and whether the exporters held controlling interests in the commission houses,
as I should try to do if I expected to export through them,