Mr. DINKINS. Well, their intention was to convey to us the impression that "You have done business with us for a long time, Mr. Dinkins, and we appreciate the business"

Mr. FISHER. That is right.

Mr. DINKINS. "And we want to do our full measure to contribute to the success of any enterprise in which you are interested." Mr. FISHER. Yes.

Mr. DINKINS. "And if the matter is left to us personally, you could count on us without reserve, but we can not do just as we would like to in such cases, and there is opposition".

Mr. FISHER. Yes.

Mr. DINKINS. "And it has to be considered; and while we have indicated to you-Mr. Wexler first, and then to you--that we would go on with this business, we must now modify that."

Mr. FISHER. Is that all?

Mr. DINKINS. And "we will have to see about it later." And then I rather advocated letting them alone and trying to put the business through elsewhere.

Mr. FISHER. All right, go on.

Mr. DINKINS. I told my friend, Mr. Mayer, that we could probably have this handled by people he never heard of, but, on reflection, we decided that we might not be able to do that. It is hard to get together that much money.

Mr. FISHER. So you wanted to do business with Reynolds?
Mr. DINKINS. We felt it was almost necessary.

Mr. FISHER. And now, after that, did you have any talks with Mr. Reynolds yourself?

Mr. DINKINS. The last talk that I recall with Mr. Reynolds was the day of the Yale football game.

Mr. FISHER. I said, had you anything else than you have now detailed to me in answer to my examination occurred with respect to Mr. Reynolds himself?

Mr. DINKINS. No.

Mr. FISHER. What you learned after that you learned from what Mr. Wexler told you?

Mr. DINKINS. Yes.

Mr. FISHER. Can you recall anything whatever, Mr. Dinkins, that anybody-Mr. Wexler or anybody else told you, as coming from the International Harvester Co. or any of its officers as to their attitude other than you have explained to me here in answer to crossexamination?

Mr. DINKINS. Why, yes; there is a good deal more.

Mr. FISHER. All right, now, what was it? Let us get it. I want to get the specific thing.

Mr. DINKINS. Well, it would be impossible for me to recall all the things that have happened in connection with it.

Mr. FISHER. Recall some of them.

Mr. DINKINS. Well, one thing is our own directors, at home from influences that I am not sure of at all-grew pretty lukewarm on the transaction after all this newspaper talk began, and they thought maybe I was wasting my time, and likely to lose some of my money, and that they would just as soon I would drop it. Mr. Wexler used the illustration of the European war. I do not know where they came from, but I know that it is a fact.

Mr. FISHER. That is, there might be a European war, and that might make it difficult for you to get the money?

Mr. DINKINS. No; that Mr. Wexler knows the European war is in progress; that he has not seen any of the battles. [Laughter.]

Mr. FISHER. I see; that is to say, you can not tell us anything that the International Harvester Co. did, but you having had a lot of trouble, and there being a lot of newspaper discussion of it, you just feel, on general principles, that that may have been responsible for it; is that it?

Mr. DINKINS. Well, I would say this, Mr. Fisher: I have been in a good many transactions, some of them rather large transactions, for our section of the country, and I am more or less familiar with the psychology of transactions, and I must say that I never entered into a transaction that has given a fractional part of the trouble that this transaction has given us. We had attacks from newspapers; we have had Representatives in Congress introducing resolutions, saying we are a lot of highbinders, and all sorts of vile things. We have had the Senate resolutions introduced here, and my mail has been full of extracts from farm-implement journals, telling about this transaction, and how heinous it is, and how we are going to oppress the farmer, and everywhere I go now people say "sisal," and it is getting

to be a kind of nuisance.

Mr. FISHER. You see it at night, sometimes. [Laughter.]

Mr. DINKINS. I want to say this, that notwithstanding our foreign trade councils, and Pan-American conferences, and the expressed attitude of the present administration in favor of our doing foreign trade, at this opportune moment, if anybody else wants to handle any foreign trade, he had better go somewhere else; I do not want to take up any others.

Mr. FISHER. This has been a very extraordinary transaction in your business experience?

Mr. DINKINS. It certainly has, for me, sir. I have been traveling more or less since November, coming to Washington, seeing lawyers, finding that people I had expected to associate with me had dropped it, and it is rather discouraging now; that is the fact of the matter. Mr. FISHER. So that you have had an unusual amount of trouble over it, as you say.

Mr. DINKINS. I certainly have.

Mr. FISHER. Heretofore you have never had anything just like this. Mr. DINKINS. I have never had anything which I had as much trouble with as this.

Mr. FISHER. Have you ever been connected with the financing of a trust or monopoly in any article or commodity?

Mr. DINKINS. No, and I do not think that I am now.

Mr. FISHER. Your conception of this thing is that it is not a trust or a monopoly?

Mr. DINKINS. That is my conception.

Mr. FISHER. Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you have been troubled is because it occurs to other people that it is a palpable trust and monopoly, carried out with the aid of high finance in the United States medieval oligarchy in Yucatan-did that ever occur to you?

Mr. MAYER. Did you use the word "high finance?"

Mr. FISHER. Yes, very high.

Mr. DINKINS. I took the trouble to go into the price of binder twine at some length; in fact, I am quite an expert now in some of these things, and I find that the price of binder twine in the past has fluctuated quite widely. At times, when the reasons for the advance were not quite so obvious as they are just now, that is the increase in freight charges, and that sort of thing; and no farmers made much fuss about it, everybody seemed to think that it was just a part of our ordinary business transactions; sometimes wheat is $1.30 and sometimes it is $1.

Senator GRONNA. And sometimes it was 45 cents.

Mr. DINKINS. Yes, sir. Sometimes somebody away out in Montana would have a farmers' meeting.

Mr. FISHER. Or North Dakota, even.

Mr. DINKINS. Saying that they were being ruined; that the price of binder twine was to go up to 20 cents a pound; another fellow in another State says the same thing, and then gets an editor to write about it in his paper. The first thing you know a Representative in Congress gets up and introduces a bill. It looked to me as if they had not done that before. [Laughter.]

Mr. FISHER. You have not any doubt about the fact that the military Government down in Yucatan is now in absolute control of the Yucatan sisal market, have you?

Mr. DINKINS. I am not acquainted with conditions down there.. Mr. FISHER. Oh, well, now, Mr. Dinkins.

Mr. DINKINS. I have inquired a good deal about it. As near as I can understand it, the farmers down there may have been used much in the way Mr. Wexler and I think we have been used, had pressure applied on us in the past; but, as I understand it now, it is a voluntary association; that is our understanding of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Fisher, I do not want to break in.
Mr. FISHER. I am at your disposal, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. I was trying to let you finish with that line of thought, but I believe we will have to adjourn now and go on

to-morrow.

We will now adjourn until 10.30 o'clock to-morrow morning.
Mr. MAYER. Do you expect to hold a session on Saturday?

The CHAIRMAN. That is our present plan. We are anxious to finish the hearing.

Mr. FISHER. We are all a little desirous of having some intimation from the committee, whenever you can give it, as to what are the future plans of the committee. Whenever you do get along to a point where you have some idea about it, I should appreciate being advised. I shall probably have to suit all my professional engagements to your plans.

The CHAIRMAN. We are going just as rapidly as we can. I do not know about the witnesses who are not here, or what length of time we will recess before coming to that. The committee has not decided that. We would like to go ahead. There are a number of gentlemen here from Yucatan, and the committee is especially anxious to hear them.

Mr. Orth is here, and he will probably have a pretty prolonged testimony.

Mr. FISHER. You will go ahead on Friday and Saturday?
The CHAIRMAN. We will surely do that.

Mr. FISHER. Will you adjourn then to Monday or Tuesday? The CHAIRMAN. That will be our present idea, to go right ahead until we exhaust our present witnesses. If you want us to hear Mr. Daniels, we will be glad to do that.

Mr. FISHER. If you are to hear all of those witnesses who have been suggested, you will go on next week and for several other weeks in succession.

The CHAIRMAN. We have to speed this up. We may have to hold night sessions. I think we ought to try to finish the main part of it next week. I do not know how the other members of the committee feel, but I feel that way.

Mr. FISHER. Mr. Mayer, do you wish to go ahead next week?

Mr. MAYER. Do you inquire about my personal convenience? Whatever the committee desires. My own convenience would beI have some other engagements, but I am not going to advance them. I would prefer to have an interval.

Mr. FISHER. Can you not say anything about having an interval the middle of the week?

The CHAIRMAN. No, sir; I do not think we could, yet.

(Thereupon, at 4.58 p. m., the subcommittee adjourned to Friday, February 25, 1916, at 10.30 o'clock a. m.)

IMPORTATION OF SISAL AND MANILA HEMP.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1916.

UNITED STATES SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY,

Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met at 10.40 o'clock a. m., Senator Ransdell presiding.

Present: Senator Ransdell (chairman) and Senator Gronna.

STATEMENT OF MR. LYNN H. DINKINS, PRESIDENT INTERSTATE TRUST & BANKING CO., NEW ORLEANS, LA,, REPRESENTING THE PAN AMERICAN COMMISSION CORPORATION OF NEW YORK-Resumed.

Mr. FISHER. Mr. Dinkins, who introduced Mr. Browne to you? Mr. DINKINS. I do not recollect, Mr. Fisher.

Mr. FISHER. There has been some reference here to this 6 cents a pound fixed as the basis in your contract. When was that matter first discussed by you?

Mr. DINKINS. The matter of how much we should lend a pound was under discussion from the time we first seriously considered Mr. Browne's suggestions.

Mr. FISHER. When was 6 cents first adopted? Was that the first form of contract you had?

Mr. DINKINS. My impression is that it was; yes.

Mr. FISHER. At that time neither you nor Mr. Wexler had had any conversation whatever with Mr. Legge of the International Harvester Co., had you?

Mr. DINKINs. I had not.

Mr. FISHER. No; and did Mr. Wexler tell you that he had had any?

Mr. DINKINS. No.

Mr. FISHER. So that the theory that that 6 cents was based on any statement made by Mr. Legge as to an average price for 25 years could not be the correct one?

Mr. DINKINS. Well, so far as it controlled my opinion, it could not. I got my idea of prices from discussion with Dr. Rendon's brother and with Mr. Browne, and perhaps two or three other people. I got no information from Mr. Legge that was controlling with me as to the matter of fixing prices or in any respect.

Mr. FISHER. Nor did you get any information from Mr. Wexler based, so far as you know, on any conversation he had had with Mr. Legge?