Official Report of the National Foreign Trade Convention Volume 28 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 Excerpt: ...business. at a minimum cost and give them somewhat the same advantage as. a large corporation would have, who could not afford selling agencies. or their own offices. What I would particularly like to know, if we do know, is whether or not that could be done. The Chairman: I do not know that there is any authority present in this room able to give us complete security on that point. A brief report is to be made from this Group conference to the general conference to-morrow afternoon. The Chairman is entrusted with the approval of the proceedings of this Group conference and I assume under that general ruling it would be perfectly permissible to express any desire which the conference may have to the general meeting, if that is the wish of this conference. Mr. W. L. Saunders: Perhaps I might say a word on the subject. I do not pretend to know, no one knows; all that we are endeavoring to do is to express our views and endeavor to get at the facts as far as we can reach them. What suggests itself to me is this: To organize a selling company in this country for the sole purpose of securing export trade is all right, in my judgment, under the Anti-Trust Acts. The operations of that company would, however, have to be so conducted as not to "unreasonably" restrain or limit trade in the United States--and there is the difficulty. It would, furthermore, have to be so operated as to play fair with its competitors. I will endeavor to explain those two points in this way: There is at present a very high price upon wheat, $1.40, due to natural economic conditions, I think, brought about by the war. Foreign nations are absorbing more wheat than customary from this country, the result being that a large portion of our wheat is going abroad. The wheat sold at ho...