POOLS, IN INDUSTRY. Rival manufacturers or traders who, while still ostensibly in competition with each other, either allocate among themselves by agreement the amount or propor tion of business each shall do, or agree as to who shall put in the lowest tender for a contract, frequently set up, as a part of their agreement machinery, a pooling system. One type is that adopted by those associations of manufacturers in the same in dustry which allot to each member a percentage of the output of the whole group, and require that each member who exceeds his "quota" shall pay an appropriate sum into a pool and that each member who does not reach his quota shall receive an appropriate sum from it. In associations concerned with work for which ten ders are asked, three kinds of pooling are known. In one the tenders prepared by members of the group are confidentially ex amined by the secretary of the association and a percentage added to each, to be subsequently paid by the successful tenderer into a pool and divided among the rest. In another a uniform tender
price is decided upon which all shall quote on the understanding that the firm receiving the contract shall pay an agreed percentage into the pool. In another the tenderers are informed of the order in which the sums quoted run, from highest to lowest, in order that the lowest tenderer may hold out for his price: in which case also the successful tenderer pays an agreed percentage of his con tract into a pool. Another arrangement is the profit pooling agreement in which the future profits of two or more businesses are for a specified period paid into a common fund and divided out in agreed proportions. See ASSOCIATIONS, INDUSTRIAL; Coat