406. REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE,

The German system is positively and progressively absorbing business from
nother countries, so I would favor cartels, syndicates, or combinations, providing
they were properly controlled, so that the stockholders would be assured of a
fair return and no more. Any business which develops by patent or secret
process should be further protected and given part of the extra profit accruing
therefrom. As to foreign trade, we must be selfish and set our sails to the wind.
A manufacturer of steel wool:
We understand that in our and kindred lines German houses received, besides
being favored in freight rates, a bonus on export shipments and were favored
otherwise, but as this is hard to prove, we, for this reason, have not brought
this matter up in former customhouse litigations to which we were called as
witnesses for the United States Government,
It is very difficult for small American manufacturers to combat conditions
of this kind in normal times, and equally difficult to go into and make assertions
 which are an open secret but can not be proved.
To give an instance, one of our competitors shipped steel wool several years
ago from Antwerp to Chicago, via Boston, and their rate was 82 cents per 100
pounds, while our rate from New York to Chicago was 75 cents per 100 pounds.
We went before the eastern freight classification without any result. whatever;
we tried again with same result, and are sure, were we.in Germany, such a Just
complaint would be well considered by the authorities.
A well-known leather concern of the Middle West:

Before the recent war German manufacturers were protected by their Government
 and allowed to fix prices for domestic market, thus enabling them to
andersell their surplus stocks abroad in competition with United States manufacturers.

COMBINATIONS IN PARTICULAR INDUSTRIES.—More important, perhaps,
 than the rather general replies quoted thus far, are the replies
that cite specific industries in which competition has been encountered
 from foreign cartels, syndicates, or combinations. The majority
 of these replies are from persons who actually engage in export
trade, and their statements represent their personal experience in
seeking to extend their trade in foreign countries. Cartels and syndicates
 are often referred to by name. The principal industries in
which cartels are thus described with some particularity in the answersare:
 Chemicals and dyestuffs; coal; fertilizer, including potash;
and iron and steel, including various kinds of machinery. Some of
the more specific replies reporting competition with foreign combinations,
 arranged alphabetically by industries, follow:
BacoX (DENMARK).

We know of none except the Danish Bacon Co. (Ltd.), with which we
actually compete in Great Britain. This is a cooperative organization composed
 of Danish farmers and hog raisers who operate along cooperative lines
and, we understand, under certain agreements among themselves as to prices
and production. They are represented in London, where they maintain an
office for the sale and distribution of their product. The supply of Danish
bacon and the prices that they maintain are important competitive factors in
that market. (From the vice president of a large packing house that exports
one-third of its product.)
Butter (DENMARK AND ENGLAND).

The writer knows personally of the combination of Danish tinned-butter
packers, which practically controls the world’s trade in tinned butter. This
combination sees to it that only the best grade of butter is packed, properly
preserved for warm climates, and that the price is kept at a uniformly moderate
level throughout each year. The advantage of this combination to the butter
trade of Denmark is very great. By insisting upen a high standard of quality