The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-03-02

farmer to make sugar on his farm; for
just so surely as he dares to raise a surplus
crop of any kind and sell it, the govern
ment fines him 40 per cent. of the pay he
receives for his surplus. If the farmer
were permitted to receive sugar for his
wheat he could supply himself and sell
sugar at a fair profit for cents pound.
But the government will not permit farm
ers to produce and sell anything that can
be made in mill, hence the whole people
buy sugar at 10 cents from the mill owners
instead of at cents from the farmers.
The farmers were told thatimports must
be stopped, but were not told that these
imports are the pay received in exchange
for the farmers exports. To stop imports
is to stop exports, and hence to stop farm
ers from having any surplus products. 1t is
the farmers surplus that pays the carpen-
ter, the mason, the blacksmith, the school
master, the lawyer and the doctor. And
while the law can and does diminish the
purchasing power of that surplus in the
case of nearly every manufactured article,
it is too much to believed that the farmer
will ever consent to laws intended to abol-
ish or destroy that surplus product.
Nor dollar in coin leaves this country
to pay for goods. Exports pay for i'm
ports. Goods pay for goods. No money is
needed or used in these transactions.
a short time since a writer in The HER
AID made characteristic defense of the
sugar bounty, in which 1t was stated that
1.-The wisest statesmen have had always be-
fore them the far-seeing policy Of fostering
the (Sugar) industry, and have been deter
mined that so expensive and generally used
a commodity should be produced at home"
Everything we eat, use or wear is PRO
duced at home" directly or indirectly. The
advocates of the sugar bounty are re-
quested TO show single article we use
that our own labor has not purchased-has
not ''produced' at home. What is meant
by ''productions'' Production is a change
iu the shape, time or place in which any
natural object exists, to adapt it to our
use Any one who accomplishes such a
change, by whatever means, is pro-
Queer The farmer produces sugar when
he exports potatoes and receives sugar
in payment. The sugar is the product of
his labor. Now, to offer a bounty, merely
to have that sugar produced in mill in
which the farmer must then labor, instead
of permitting the farmer to produce the
sugar 10y exchange) with his farm labor,
is simply change and loss, not a gain in
production.
The fact that we have found our terri
tory to be well adapted to the production
of sugar, ought to insure us an abundance
of sugar at smaller cost to US than in
countries not adapted to its production.
But now comes the astonishing informa-
ton, that since we have good facilities for
producing sugar, therefore we ought cheer
fully to pay more for our sugar than if we
had no such facilities and did not produce
any sugar. According to this doctrine, the
richer our territory happens to be in
natural resources, the harder we shall
have to work to make living out of it.
The blessings of nature are thus turned
into a curse
The ACCESSIBILITY of paying bounties is
merely question in arithmetic. A bounty,
for example, may be asked for on sugar if
sugar, when completely finished, sells for
cents pound and no more, but its prime
cost, including the profits, is 10 cents. Its
then quite clear that no one will volunteer
the production of sugar in Utah, for fear of
the loss of 2 cents on each pound. But if
the government is willing to defray this
loss-in other words, if il will pay bounty
of . cents per pound to the producer of
sugar, the production can then go on and
the public revenue, that is to say the com
munity at large, instead of the producer,
will be the loser of the cents per pound.
There is something more, however, to
this inquiry. Is it quite certain that the net
profits to the Utah sugar producer will
amount to . cents per poundl The sugar
may sell at, say S cents q pound; ? cents
bounty being added will make it worth 10
cents to the producer, which would be the
price he receives, though the public will
pay directly only cents. The producer
will need to clear 20 per cent of the price
of the sugar in order to gain as much as the
bounty amounts to. If he does not gain
this amount then the country will be los
ing on every pound of sugar he makes, Just
the difference between his actual gain and
20 per cent of what he gets for his sugar.
There is more sugar now produced bv