ABSTRACT
THE quasi-monopolist organisation gradually established by trade associations differs in structure in many respects from industrial combinations with which it is frequently closely allied. Industrial combination, represented by cartels and trusts, is in general exclusively concerned in its initial stages with organising the monopoly of certain types of manufacture. Sometimes such combination concerns itself with other branches of economic activity. The American oil trustification depended less upon the monopoly of wells and refineries than upon that of the means of transport-the pipe lines to the coast; in some branches of the overseas fruit trade (e.g. bananas) monopoly expresses itself not in the concentration of plantations, but in domination of the trade by ownership of a fleet of merchant ships of a special type. But such cases may well be considered as exceptional. Trustification by vertical combination may seem to be a conglomeration of productive processes hitherto unconnected with each other, and cartels of several industrial groups may enter into closer relation with each other-thus also linking stages of the productive process which were formerly unconnected-but this in no way implies any " un "<industrial activity. Manufacturers forming such trusts or being members of such cartels remain very definitely within the scope of their professional activities and knowledge. Apart from some new tendencies to link up industrial combinations with huge financial interests and transactions," which compel the trust to enter the new field of " finance", industrial combination remains definitely" industrial". This is an important point of difference from trade associations.
