The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-27
F|NANCIER DENIES
 BRIBERY CHARGES Charles A. Conant Says News paper Man Is Wrong HE SENDS A TELEGAM MT. Conant Declares He Never Tried 10 Influence New York Paper to Take
 Up the Cause of Ship
 Subsidy
HE SENDS A TELEGAM

| Washington, January 26.-A fiat denial of statements made by Alfred w. Dods- worth, business manager of the New York Journal of Commerce, who said an offer to buy the editorial influence of his paper had been communicated by it's then cor l respondent, Charles A Conant, was made in telegram to the house ship subsidy Investigating committee today from MT. Conant, now a New York financier.
 Mr Conant says MT. Dodsworth was 'laboring under a misapprehension," and that he Conant, was never interested in any manner in shipping legislation and never submitted any offer from the Spanish government, or from any other source to bribe the Journal of Commerce or to influence it's editorial opinion on any subject
 MT. Conant was subpoenaed to appear before the committee next Monday with John Dodsworth, editor of the Journal of Commerce. and F. C. Donald of Chicago, manager of the Central Passenger asso- ciation.
 Mr Conant in his telegram said
 MT Dodsworth is laborng under a N+-N~N any such proposition was submitted by me to his father, or to any one on the Journal of Commerce. I continued until the close of 1901 to represent the Journal of Commerce in Washington, and was trusted with the writing of editorials upon many questions of public policy. l do not believe that MT. Dodsworth would ever have permitted this if he had be- lieved that I had been a party to any proposition to bribe him or the paper"
 The working methods of the confer ence'' steamship lines, handling what is claimed to be 9S per cent of the trans Atlantic passenger traffic, were described before the committee by Herman Winter manager of Oelrichs company, the gen. eral representatives of the North Ger man Lloyd Steamship company.
 MT. Winter testified that the whole spirit of the passenger traffic pool was that each line must maintain it's share of the business and when one line gets too many passengers it would be authorized to raise the rate. He contended that the onus of the reduc- tion of rates on sailing dates of the in dependent Uranium lines was on that company. that his own line never took the initiative in cutting a rate For 15 years, he said, his line had sailings on Thursdays and then the Uranium line began advertising a sailing on that date with a reduced rate and in order to get any business at all he had to reduce his rates.
 MT Winter denied a number of the statements made by Paul G. Fourman | of the Uranium line. The control sta- the Russian German frontier, were to hexamine prospective passengers as to their physical and mental admissibil- ity, saving them the inconvenience of being turned back later on when they would have a long distance to travel to get back home and the stations were In this respect, complying with the wishes of the German government and cooperating with the immigrant laws of the United States.
 He said more were turned back at these control stations than are turned back at the United States ports.
 The arrangements with ticket agents in this country were explained by MT Winter. He said the commissions paid both by the railroads to the steamship company and the division of the com missions with the ticket agents were purely business propositions and not in any way violative of the law Mr Winter said that so far as he knew no member of his company had any re- lations with the New York Journal of Commerce.