d; but her resources were insufficient.

The bumper world crop of 19,090,000 bags in 1901-02 was followed, in
1906-07, with another extraordinary yield of 24,307,000 bags, of which
Brazil alone produced 20,192,000 bags. To make good its promise to the
planters, ready cash was needed; and so the Sao Paulo government sent a
special commissioner to Europe to get it. For sixty years the
Rothschilds had acted as Brazil's bankers. The commissioner went to the
Rothschilds first. He was flatly refused. After that, he was turned down
by practically every bank on the continent. It looked as if the bankers
had entered into a gentlemen's agreement to make it unanimous. Then the
commissioner bethought himself of the coffee merchants; and that thought
naturally suggested Hermann Sielcken, who, singularly enough, happened
to be conveniently resting at nearby Baden-Baden. In August, 1906, the
commissioner waited upon Mr. Sielcken and begged his aid.

It was Sielcken's hour of triumph. For years he had been soliciting
Brazil. Now the tables were turned, and Brazil was asking favors of
Sielcken.

The rest of the story is best told by Robert Sloss, who wrote it for
_World's Work_ from information furnished by trade authorities--and even
by Mr. Sielcken, himself, in various speeches, newspaper articles, and
on the witness stand. It is presented here with certain minor
corrections by the author:

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked Hermann Sielcken of the
commissioner from the state of Sao Paulo.

"We want you to finance for us five to eight million bags of
coffee," said the commissioner blandly.

Here was an adventure. Here was a proposition to lift bodily out of
the market half as much coffee as the world's total production had
averaged for the ten preceding years when prices had been so low.
Presumably, if this were done, prices would be doubled. But Hermann
Sielcken shook his head.

"No," he said, "there is not the slightest chance for it, not the
slightest." And then he pointed out that there would be "no
financial assistance coming from anywhere" if the Sao Paulo
planters kept on raising such ridiculously large crops of coffee.

The commissioner assured him that the prospect was for smaller
crops in future. Hermann Sielcken was not so sure about it "At a
price low enough," he mused, "I might be able to raise funds to pay
eighty percent o