Excerpt from Export Register of the Federation of British Industries

For this scheme of organisation to be complete, it was seen that British manufacturers and producers required the co-ordinating assistance of a National Association, which would concentrate and weld together the efforts which each trade exerted through its trade association, so that manufacturers might be enabled to Speak and act in a manner commensurate with their strength and importance. The national needs during the war, and, still more, the problems which would have to be faced when the war was over, necessitated the formation of a strong central organisation, representative of British manufacturers and producers as a whole.

These considerations led to the inauguration of the Federation of British Industries in the summer of 1916. The support of the leading manufacturers and producers in the country was at once given to the new body, and it rapidly succeeded in establishing itself as the only organisation which could claim to represent the views of the manufacturing section of the community as a whole. In the short period of four years, it has enrolled no fewer than thirteen hundred direct members, including some 200 trade associations, and is in direct or indirect touch with at least British manufacturers, covering every industry in the country.

This large membership has been accelerated by the absorption in the Federation of other bodies having similar or cognate objects. Early in 1917, the Employers' Parliamentary Association merged its identity in that of the Federation. Twelve months later, the Central Council of Associations of Controlled Establishments - an organisation formed to watch the interests of firms which were under Government control during the war - handed over its functions to the Federation of British Industries, and on the con elusion of the war, the Overseas Organisation of the Federation absorbed the British Manufacturers' Corporation, which had been established to develop British trade in foreign countries.

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