International Shipping Cartels. A Study of Industrial Self-Regulation by Shipping Conferences.

After a detailed analysis and painstaking evaluation of practices and opinions, the author comes up with no startling conclusions. He phrases the problem as that of finding "the most desirable proportions for combining competition, monopoly, and government regulation" (p. 299). His conclusion is that the conference system is " a reasonably satisfactory form of selfregulation" (p. 300). However, he considers that further regulation by individual countries in accordance with their own standards, and an international body for investigations and consultations, along the lines of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, are also desirable. Following an historical summary of the investigation and regulation of shipping conferences in a number of countries, particularly the United States, the economics of shipping conferences are discussed in detail. Since a shipping conference is merely a meeting of independent competing companies furnishing scheduled ("liner") services for "regulating or restricting competition,'' various practices of conferences are evaluated from the standpoints of their effectiveness in controlling cutthroat competition, on the one hand, and of the danger of their leading to the abuses of monopoly, on the other. Deferred rebates—the payment to shippers of rebates of a part of the rates already paid by them during one period, provided they have patronized only conference liners both for the period covered by the rebates and for a specified subsequent period before the rebate is paid—constitute a particularly strong method of tying shippers to a conference. Their payment was made illegal in the foreign trade of the United States by the Shipping Act of 1916. Preferential rate agreements, with shippers using only conference liners but without the delay in obtaining the benefit of the lower rates, have been quite basic to the conference system; but in recent years the courts and administrative bodies in the United States have been restricting the use of this simpler device also. The effects of competition within a conference, between conferences (by means of indirect shipment), and from non-conference liners and tramps (non-scheduled carriers) are carefully evaluated under various circumstances which affect the supply of and demand for shipping. For the lawyer the most significant portions of the book are probably Chapters VII and XIII, reviewing, respectively, the regulation of shipping conferences in the United States since the Shipping Act of 1916, and the steps taken toward international co-operative action by governments in the shipping field. The former presents an interesting summary of the growth of administrative precedent in applying rather vague standards in the statute. Although the governmental ownership of shipping in some countries is mentioned, no light is thrown on any particular problems that may