THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
410 
Overproduction is one of the most effective methods of forcing 
down the selling price of an article. Therefore whenever a mar¬ 
ket presents indications of extreme stability of price each manu¬ 
facturer will attempt to steal a march on the others by overpro¬ 
ducing. He thus increases the unit of profit, that is, the profit 
on each article turned out, but he also increases the number of 
articles turned out, and it is the product of these two factors that 
constitutes his total profit. But if all the manufacturers are 
doing this, and if consumption does not simultaneously expand, 
a point will be reached where there is a superabundance of the 
article in question. A crisis is set up, in which the immediate 
danger is the lowering of the price of the article, a condition 
which the kartell opposes, as we have seen, by decreeing the 
maintenance of a certain price. But if the kartell stopped at 
that the excess of production over consumption would increase 
and the danger would be merely postponed and aggravated. In 
order to protect the industry completely the kartell must regulate 
production and make effort to stimulate exportation. Accord¬ 
ingly the executive board fixes each year the amount that each 
concern may manufacture. 
A Frenchman or an Englishman might object to this method, 
which deprives the manufacturer of a certain part of the control 
of his own business. But the German believes that voluntary 
collective initiative is superior to individual initiative. Be¬ 
sides it must not be forgotten that to limit the output does not 
interfere with the internal autonomy of the industry, and that 
the manufacturer remains the master of his mode of production, 
for the kartell does not pool the methods of work; each associate 
retains his private ownership of his patents, not being obliged to 
share them with his fellows. 
The matter of fixing how much each is to manufacture is not 
without its difficulties. Theoretically, each firm is favored in 
accordance with its productive capacity, but this a very elastic 
measure. In practice, all compete for allotments of orders, and 
settlements are only made after elaborate mutual concessions 
and accommodations. 
But the burden of this limitation is very largely compensated 
by the consequences of the policy of exportation which the Ger¬ 
man kartells have been so energetically pursuing for the last 
thirty years. Riesser says: “It is a policy born of necessity.” 
You cannot limit the output of an entire industry with impunity, 
for you run the risk of thus forcing up the selling price to enor¬ 
mous heights. You are therefore obliged, willy-nilly, to over¬ 
produce. An amount equal to the consumption within the na¬ 
tional borders is reserved for the home market, at the advan¬ 
tageous price which the kartell, aided by a strong protective 
tariff, maintains for Germany; the rest is injected into the for¬ 
eign market, where it is disposed of at any risk, for a profit, or 
for cost, or at a loss. This process of “dumping” manufactures 
has recently been resorted to by Germans on a gigantic scale, and 
has succeeded in some foreign markets, notably in France, in 
discouraging native competition to such an extent that the su¬ 
perstition has become quite current that to attempt to compete 
with the Germans commercially is an absolute impossibility, at 
least in certain commodities. 
It took the commercal middle classes of Germany a long time 
to find out that they had better look into the matter of their high 
prices at home while they were permitting the manufacturers to 
sell cheap to foreigners, but about 1900 a rather strong feeling 
against the kartells began to culminate. In order to make, some 
concessions to public opinion the Imperial Government, toward 
the end of 1902, appointed an investigating committee to deter¬ 
mine what influence the kartells had had in bringing about the 
recent crisis in the metallurgical industries. The commission’s 
findngs included a statement that the crisis would have been 
worse had it not been for the existence of the kartells, and 
while there cannot be any doubt that the commission had studied 
the problems honestly, its findings must have been welcome to 
those in authority in the commercial world. 
The social consequences of the kartell are not the least of its 
many interesting features. By regulating production and sales 
they contribute to the maintenance of public order and to a 
proper collection of taxes, developing, at the same time, the 
strength of the national industries. Doubtless the Imperial 
Government has not failed to recognize these points, for it has 
always favored the establishment of kartells, to which it has, on 
a number of occasions, given its official sanction. Two instances 
of such Government sanction will serve as illustrations: one was 
the authorization issued to the fiscal (national) manufacturers to 
join the kartells; the other was the imperial law of May, 25, 1910, 
which imposed the kartell organization on an entire industry, 
namely, the potash industry. 
Jacob Wittmer Hartmann, Ph. D., 
Professor at the College of the City of New York. 
—New Torfc Times. 
SPRUCES AND OTHER PLANTS FOUND 
AT THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
The Pinetum. After two seasons of abundant rain the 
conifers are in good condition this autumn, and the Pine¬ 
tum is now perhaps the most interesting part of the Ar¬ 
boretum to visit. At one time or another every conifer 
which had any chance of surviving has been tried in the 
Arboretum, and some useful information on the value of 
the different exotic and American species, with the excep¬ 
tion of the new introductions from China, as ornamental 
trees in this climate has been obtained from the Arbore¬ 
tum experiments. Considering how generally unfavor¬ 
able the New England climate is for trees of this class, the 
large number that succeed here is surprising, although 
it must be remembered that in Ibis climate many conifers, 
especially Spruces and Firs, are often at their best when 
not more than forty or titty years old and that as they 
grow older they gradually fail and lose their value as or¬ 
namental trees. This is true of the so-called Colorado 
Blue Spruce (Picea pungens ), which is still one of the 
most popular conifers in the northern United States, 
where it is propagated and planted in immense numbers, 
in spite of the fact that it early loses its value as an orna¬ 
mental tree. The Blue Spruce is very hardy, is easily 
raised and grows rapidly; young plants are of good 
shape and dense habit with their lower branches resting 
on the ground. There are two forms, one with dull green 
and the other with blue leaves, and the latter especially 
appeals to persons who are fond of unusual looking and 
sensational plants. For the nurseryman the Blue Spruce 
has everything to recommend it. easy germination of the 
seed, quick growth and unusual beauty in the young 
plants, and therefore a certainty of a quick sale. For 
the planter looking for something more important than a 
plant for a city garden or a small suburban yard, this tree 
has proved a failure. It is not surprising for Picea 
pungens, growing in small groves near streams in the val¬ 
leys of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, long before it 
attains its full size is a thin, scrawny, miserable looking 
tree with a few short branches only near the top of the 
stem. This tree was discovered in 1862; seed was 
planted the following year in the Harvard Botanic Gar¬ 
den. and one of the plants raised at that time is still alive 
in the Arboretum on the southern slope of Bussey Hill 
where it is kept as a warning for planters who are de¬ 
ceived by the beauty of young plants of the Blue Spruce. 
Picea Engelmannii. This tree as it grows nearly up 
to the timber line of the central Rocky Mountains, where 
