Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-04-28
The New Tariff-Sugar.


ways and means committee has erred
in some of the many details which it
was obliged to decide about will not
be denied by any member of the COM
mittee, and valuable information may
sometimes be obtained from the criti-
cisms of foes as we'll as from friends.
But in this case the tendency of COM
ments thus far has been to Increase
confidence in the soundness of the
committees judgment in nearly all
particulars. The bill has been prin-
cipally assailed for those features
which are clearly its chief merits.
The main point of attack has been
the sugar schedule, which is assailed
becaus it withdraws tariff protection
from producers, because it offers
bounty, and on the plea that it will
entrench the trust behind duty suffi-
cient to maintain an odious monopo-
ly. The offer of a bounty was in
tended to substitute effective encOur-
agement, whereas all duties hitherto
have in this instance proved ineffect-
i've. If the bounty fails no one is
harmed, and the money does not go
out of the treasury. But if existing
inadequate duties are retained, the
money will be taken from the people
without any commensurate benefit.
In other countries the system of
bounty has been found exceedingly
eficacious, and not one OF those who
object to them has yet explained why
they may not be expected to produce
similar results in this country.
The claim that the trust will be
helped rests upon the assertion that
the cost of refining is less than fonr-
tenths of a cent a pound. But the
truth is that the cost is not known,
unless to the most successful refners,
and differs materially at different es-
adjustments. Taking granulated su-
gar as test, it sells at present at
6215 cents per 100 pounds more than
SO degrees centrifugal sugar, whereas
the proposed duty would be but 40
cents. The fact would seem to
be that the duty would suffice to
hold the home market for home pro-
ducers only on the condition that they
sell to consumers at scarcely a shade
more than the bare cost of refining.
But it would leave the trust entirely
at the mercy of foreign competition,
at any time when the trust attempts
to charge more than is reasonable for
the service rendered. Bearing in
mind that the margin charged by re-
finers has much of the time been more
than a cent per pound, and that the
difference between granulated and
centrifugal was IL cents last Septem-
Der, averaged 1.24 cents all last year
and .23 cents in 1888, and that the
duty would force the refiners to re
duce their charge to little more than
the bare cost of refining in other
countries, one can hardly say that it
would help the independent Ameri-
can competitors, upon whom the pub
lie must in the end rely for the cheap
ening of refined sugar.
But it is also the fact that at least
two grades of sugar, in all respects
as wholesome and useful and former
ly used by the people far more largely
than any others, could be imported
free of all duties under the proposed
tariff. If workingmen or other con-
sumers should prefer to buy sugar
not over No. 16 Ouch standard in
color-that is, more nearly brown
than white-they can be absolutely
independent of the trust and the tar
| iff also. If consumers should not
| choose to do so, that would mean
that they preferred to pay the addl-
tional 40 cents per 100 pounds for
the services of the refners.
Finally, the choice is between the
proposed and the present tariff, and
the consumer now pays about ? cents
duty on the raw sugar, 2 3-4 cents
upon sugar from No. 1S to No. IL In
color, and 8 or 81 cents on all the
refined sugar which the proposed
tariff would not admit free of duty.
On every pound of such sugar con-
sumed, the reduction in duty would
be from $500 to $3.10 per 100 lbs.
Can anybody suppose he is serving
the interests of the people by resist
ing such charge ?-TTibune.