National Characteristics.—The combination movement has accommodated itself in each country to national conditions and characteristics. In the United States, the size of the national market, and the singular uniformity in the goods required by American consumers, were both favourable to centralized large scale production. The importance of rail transport costs as an element in total selling costs and the monopolistic position of certain main railroads gave added cause for collaboration among manufacturers with a view to collective bargaining with the rail road interests. These circumstances, together with a national zest for power and masterdom, conduced when time was ripe to a rapid growth of great industrial consolidations. In the United Kingdom, great consolidations wielding monopolistic and political power have not, in general, been so formidable as in America, nor have British associations of independent manufacturers developed so fully the range of activities displayed by such organizations in Germany. The movement toward industrial combination in the United Kingdom has been relatively more cautious and less spectacular than elsewhere. The reasons for this would appear to be partly the deep-rooted individualism of the British manu facturer and partly the greater difficulty of establishing monopo listic consolidations in a country where many of the principal in dustries are widely dispersed, where the raw materials of most of the great industries are drawn from world-wide sources, and where, for many decades, such shelter as monopoly might obtain from protective import duties was not available. None the less, combination has replaced or minimized competition over a great part of the industrial activity of the United Kingdom. In Ger many, the local concentration of the coal and iron industries, the protective policy, the state-ownership of the Prussian railways, and the inter-relations of industry with government, all contributed to the emergence of a special type of trade combination in the form of a joint selling organization between independent concerns in the same line of business empowered to fix and maintain prices and to allot the participation of each independent producer in the aggregate output. For this German type of combination the reader should see the article CARTEL.
Industrial Occurrence.—It would be difficult to lay down any rule as to the industries which are most susceptible to com bination or have travelled farthest along that road; but a few generalisations can be made. Industries engaged in supplying the need for a standard unvarying product—e.g., steel bars and rails, sewing cotton, cement, salt, sugar, tobacco—invite combination more than do industries engaged in miscellaneous and varying production, such as general engineering and shipbuilding. Manu facturing enterprises requiring much capital for their establish ment, or which can operate much more economically with ex pensive plants are, in general, more easily collected into large aggregates by the instrumentality of high finance and are more secure against sporadic competition than are industries which require little capital. Local proximity has been a factor of some importance in certain cases in facilitating centralized control; but improvements in transport and communication are minimizing this factor. Patents have formed the bed-rock of combinations in some industries e.g., electrical, chemical, and shoe-machinery; and natural monopoly has supported others. In general, manu facture lends itself to consolidation much more than agriculture; but combination plays an important part in the marketing of agricultural products. For many years, retail distribution lagged behind manufacture as a subject for combination ; but the last twenty years has seen an immense increase in the multiple shop or chain store. Indeed, no array of purely economic factors will explain why combination has developed much farther in some industries than in others; why, for example, soap, cocoa and sew ing cotton should be represented in Great Britain by vast estab lishments; why shipbuilding and coal-mining should have stood so much aloof from the general tendency. The present industrial
spread of the movement would appear to have depended, as much as on anything else, on the chance emergence in certain industries, at the critical moment, of dominant personalities who have con ceived great plans and carried them through. Where the right man with the necessary powers has been lacking at the propitious moment combination has had to wait.
The growth and present existence of trusts in the United States has been very largely conditioned by legislation. The passing of the Sherman Act of 1890 necessitated the abandonment of the trust proper and led to the adoption of the method of complete amalgamation either by outright purchase or by the formation of holding companies. This process of consolidation has proceeded very rapidly, with the result that a wide range of American indus trial production has come to be under the dominion of giant con cerns, some of which exercise considerable monopoly power. Among concerns dominant in their respective industries are the United States Steel Corporation, the Aluminum Company of America, the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, the American Radiator Corporation, the Corn Products Refining Company, and the Eastman Kodak Company. In the electrical, chemical, cement, oil seed, meat, shoe machinery, and non-ferrous metal industries, to name but a few, great consolidations play important parts. In the United Kingdom consolidations of such a size as to be capable of exercising some degree of monopolistic power also exist in the main branches of manufacture. In the cotton branch of the textile industry Messrs. J. & P. Coats and The Fine Cotton Spinners' and Doublers' Association are of long standing; and two great post war amalgamations are The Amalgamated Cotton Mills Trust and Crosses and Winkworths. In the woollen and worsted industries combination has taken the form rather of association than con solidation; but Woolcombers Ltd. is an amalgamation dating back some years, while since the World War large amalgamations have been formed in the worsted spinning and knitting wool spinning sections of the industry. Outstanding in the bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing industries are the Bradford Dyers' Associa tion, the Bleachers' Association, the Calico Printers' Association, the British Cotton and Wool Dyers' Association and the English Velvet and Cord Dyers' Association. In the chemical industry Brunner Mond and Company, the United Alkali Company, Nobel Industries and British Dyestuffs were amalgamated in 1926 into one great undertaking; Lever Brothers, the Salt Union, and Borax Consolidated, are each dominant in their respective branches of industry. In the coal industry, amalgamation has not proceeded far, except in South Wales, where there are two large groups of anthracite collieries, merged under Amalgamated Anthracite Col lieries Ltd. and United Anthracite Collieries Limited. In the iron and steel industry, combination by terminable association has been accompanied by great concentrations of capital, such as Dorman Long and Co., Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., Baldwin's Ltd., The Ebbw Vale Co. and Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds. The engineer ing and shipbuilding industries, again, present a network of ter minable associations studded by large consolidations. Foremost among these are Vickers Ltd., Armstrong Whitworth & Co., Cam mell Laird & Co. and John Brown & Co., but a score more could be quoted within almost the same range of importance. In other industries examples of dominant consolidations may be found, notably in matches, glass, bottles, electric lamps, machinery and tobacco.