There was much rejoicing in Yucatan, for the Eric was going to lend a few more paltry American and Canadian millions and reëstablish the great state industry. The Reguladora (now consisting of the hacendados) turned in some 300,000 more bales of hemp that were stored at Progreso, the Yucatan port, as their part of the capital stock of the Eric, and the hacendados went back to work. Now one of the peculiar things about “economic ruin” is that it seldom ruins a business--individuals are the only victims. Yucatan was devastated, many thousands of acres put on the non-productive list. There was no money to pay labor or to finance the crops, but the henequen business went on. To all intents and purposes about all that had happened was the elimination of most of the surplus planting which there would have been if all had gone along properly and there had been no Alvarado to corner and destroy the market. Henequen kept on growing on the haciendas and, despite increased costs of handling, it continued to move to market. Don Avelino Montes, a Spaniard who had been the chief buyer of the International Harvester Company, returned from his exile in Cuba and resumed buying. Don Arturo Pierce, the honorary British vice-consul who did the buying for the Plymouth Cordage Company, abandoned consuling and returned to the henequen trade. The price of Yucatan hemp kept slumping, but to the surprise of the Eric people, the demand was supplied with new hemp, and the Eric’s stocks of old hemp diminished but slightly. The money to rehabilitate the Yucatan haciendas was not forthcoming. The old hemp stock had to be sold first, and the wretched hacendados refused to coöperate and let the Eric unload.