REPLIES TO CARD AND SCHEDULE INQUIRIES, 375
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expense. The less expense involved in manufacture, the lower the price. This
will apply to goods that are sold on the home market. It will also mean an
increase in labor which means increase in home consumption.

Better selling methods.— Another group of about 140 replies predicates
 better selling methods of combinations; that they make direct
selling possible, are able to pay better salaries and hence secure higher
grade salesmen and better representation generally. Thus, a New
Jersey headwear manufacturer, exporting 6 per cent of his product,
wrote:
Better salesmen and better sales forces could be obtained by a cooperative
association; in fact, men would represent an association that the small manutacturer
 could never hope to take into his employ. The main drawback to
‘he small and medium sized manufacturer doing an export business has been the
fact that he could not afford to maintain the proper foreign sales force, foreign
advertising, and expensive clerical help with an intimate knowledge of foreign
conditions. This handicap would be overcome, we believe, by cooperation.
A targe manufacturer of furnaces wrote:
We think that such combinations or cooperative organizations are desirable
for the reason that such combinations would be able to command the services of
high-class salesmen or representatives who would be a credit to the houses they
represented and would get results, while an individual manufacturer would
pot be warranted in going to the expense.
A director of a Federal reserve bank wrote *

The éstablishing of a foreign market for our goods and manufactures, the advantages
 of desirable financial and credit arrangements, the maintaining of
sales agencies and agencies for promoting and advertising the products, and the
determination of the needs and wants of foreign customers, both with respect
to qualities and kinds of products and with respect to credits and financial
nrrangements, all of which are required, are, to the extent necessary to sucwess,
 quite beyond the resources and powers of ordinary individual enterprise;
whereas an organization or combination acting for numerous individual concerns
 and having behind it the combined resources of the entire membership,
could effect large results for the benefit of all and could stimulate trade for
pach in a large measure bevond what each could do for itself.

Standardization of products.—A group of over 40 replies states
that export combinations will better secure the standardization of
the quality of American goods; that goods marketed by a combination
 will gain a certain reputation on that account, etc. Thus, a
New York lawyer and economic student wrote:
In no other way can the standardization of the quality of American goods in
foreign markets be secured, to the end that *“ Made in U. S. A.” may be a guaranty
 of quality.

An exporter of the Southwest wrote:

Believe that combinations or cooperative organizations of American exporters
would in many lines result in standardizing the qualities of such lines, giving
a better name and more dependable reputation to such products; would lessen
the expense and at the same time facilitate the marketing of such products
abroad by bringing the American exporter in closer touch with the ultimate
buyer or consumer, thereby facilitating exports and broadening the market for
such products—which, "surely, in the final analysis. would be in the public
interest. -
Prestige of combinations—Over 25 replies state in substance that
combinations are in the public interest on account of the increased
influence which large organizations will have abroad; that they will
give us a standing, will secure us a greater degree of respect and
confidence, will increase our national prestige, etc. Thus, a large