To those familiar with the personal relations of the three gentlemen the substance of the charges was not new. They had been first made by Mr. Bennett the year after the passage of the Dingley Bill (1898) and in very precise form. What they amounted to then was that Mr. North, although the paid secretary of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, had worked on Mr. Aldrich’s Finance Committee while it was busy with the Dingley Bill, as “the paid lobbyist of William Whitman and one other manufacturer,”—that he had secured benefits for them “regardless of other interests,” and that “these gentlemen now (1898) aimed at the control of the United States Census, which they proposed to secure by having Mr. North (their agent) made director of the Census!” It was an ugly looking accusation, and naturally the association appointed a committee to look into the matter. Both Mr. North and Mr. Whitman made statements. They amounted to a complete denial of all the charges, and particularly of any tampering with the top duty. Mr. Whitman showed by the documents he presented that the duty on tops as it finally appeared in the Dingley Bill was the same as that fixed by the McKinley Bill. He also showed it had been retained at the request of the wool-growers. He said that when he discovered this duty was in the Dingley wool schedule he wrote a letter of protest to Mr. Dingley, in which he said: “As tops now stand in the proposed tariff bill, the duty is absolutely prohibitory.... This places me in a very awkward position before the community. Nearly everybody in this part of the country is aware of the fact that the Arlington Mills, of which I am the treasurer, has just completed an enormous plant for the manufacture of tops, and everybody will say that, through my influence, there has been secured upon tops prohibitory duties. Yarn spinners and weavers will complain, although they may not be directly affected; but everybody who is at all jealous or envious will charge that this duty has been imposed at my solicitation.... The objections, then, that I have to the top rates as now incorporated in the bill are: “1st. That they are unnecessarily high and will do nobody any good. “2d. They are so high on the article our mills manufacture as to create unfavorable criticism.” This letter and the strong and definite denials of Mr. North and Mr. Whitman were considered satisfactory by the investigating committee, which announced that in its judgment the statements of Mr. Bennett were “malicious and unwarranted,” and that he had forfeited his right to membership in the association.