This volume makes available to English readers the best known and most frequently quoted study of industrial combination from the German point of view. There is an abundance of literature on the trusts, from economists who have lived close to that evolution, and the trusts, by their more challenging position, were for two decades the centre of the discussion which turned on what in industry was safe for democracy. Meanwhile, in Germany, the alternative of the cartel was having a less noticed a controversial development, until in Westphalia there was created, out of lower forms, a working model which was new and unique in the manner in which it related producers to each other and to the market. In only a few industries has this model been fully established; but it presents a rival type to the trusts, and places the problem of combination on a different basis of analysis and tendency. The distinction between these two forms may be a matter of industries, or of national law and psychology; or they may work together, the cartel being the general envelop within which fusions are created, the types are nevertheless distinct, so much so that ‘rationalization’, as a general term, rather denotes than defines them both. IN America, the Cartel is illegal, so that industry has sought its administrative solution in fusions; in England trusts and cartels co-exist; in Germany, they are interlaced, great trusts having their feet in one cartel, their shoulders in another and their heads in a third.

Aluminium was one of most cartelised industries in the international economic panorama of the 20th century. Born following the discovery of electrolytic smelting process in 1886, this industry, even in its infancy, established a cartel which characterised its history until nearly 1980. Managers of the aluminium industry from various historical eras and countries shared the same vision about the development of their industry: to keep prices as stable as possible in order to encourage expansions and to provide return on investments. Price instability, which characterised the trade of other commodities, was unknown to the aluminium industry. This book neither argues that cartels are fundamentally evil, nor attempts to demonstrate that cartels are optimal business organisations. It instead provides an in-depth and frank analysis of the internal working of industrial organisations and of the interplay between cartels and political powers and institutions. The International Aluminium Cartel offers explanations for the construction and collapse of cartels, descriptions of their operations, and an historical interpretation of their experiences. Incorporating information gleaned from a unique collection of private and public archives from several countries, this unique study will appeal to a wide variety of readers, including academics interested in industrial and business history.