In the year 1907 a new attempt was made, this time at
subsidizing oversea branches of domestic business houses,
but with no better success. As there is no longer any im-
portant foreign point in which Austria is entirely unrepre-
sented, the subsidy represented a decided intermeddling in
established competitive conditions. The subsidized branch
houses were of course in a position to seU their goods cheaper
than their competitors, and in fact underbid on exactly
those goods to which the measures of encouragement had
not been intended to apply. As a result, the Industrial
Council decided in 1911 that such subsidies were to be granted
only exceptionally, and on political and commercial poUcy
grounds, in which case the merely business interest would
be overshadowed by the special aims of the state ; the
recommendation of the employment by the government
of foreign commercial emissaries was also couched in very
sceptical terms. The idea was now repeatedly proposed of
basing the subsidies on the quantity and value of particular
articles sold, but this would have been an undisguised export
bounty. The biU prepared by a member of the Industrial
Council, and endorsed by that body, but which failed of
passage, would also have been merely a roundabout road
to the same result. It provided that a certain percentage of
the tax on the turnover of each industrial enterprise corre-
sponding to the ratio of its export to its total business should
be reimbursed. The procedure of granting tax rebates,
which has become famiUar in the field of indirect taxes, was
thus to be carried over into that of direct taxes, where it
would, however, without doubt have led still more readily to
abuses. In order to enlarge the market for national products,
Italy, by the terms of the royal decree of December 25, 1909,
grants to persons engaged in commerce who maintain on their
own account commercial agencies in foreign centres a subsidy
limited to three years, and to a maximum amount of 4,000
lire for European points, and 5,000 lire for points outside of



COMMODITIES : POSITIVE MEASURES 253

Europe. In addition, newly established agencies may receive
for the first year a bonus toward the cost of the establishment
up to 2,000 lire.
