St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-06-15
WILL THE SUGAR CATCH THE
FLIES?

A Washington dispatch, evidently in
spIred by the grandfatherly old gentle
man who presides at once over the des-
TIMES of American agriculture and the
department devoted to that occupation,
eXultingly states that the United States
will pay sundry of its citizens within
the year to come between $4,000
and Sl5,000.000 as bounty for raising
sugar. One million will 90 to the ma
pie sugar bushes of New England, to
secure which was the price of the sup
port OF the MCKINLEY bill by Senator
EDMUNDS, While an unnamed sum is to
go to the farmers of the Northwest.
"There is every indication" proceeds
Uncle JERRY RUsK through the medium
of the convenient reporter of the asso-
ciated press, ''that the farmers of the
West who raise beets and sorghum are
fully alive to the fact that the
government intends to pay them
for their industry in addition to the
market price they will receive for their
products"
With all the respect which the circum-
stances of the case render it possible to
entertain, the GLOBE thinks that the
venerable secretary of the department
Of agriculture is romancing. 1t believes
that he Is pursuing the same magma
tive liue of talk that he found so effect
i've with the grangers in the early days
when large portion of his annual earn
ings came from the balance of trade
which he found in his favor after swap
ping horses with his future constituents.
The GLOBE does not believe that it is at
all the intention of the government to
''pay the farmer" whether in the maple
forests of New England or on the beet
and sorghum prairies of the West, '.for
their industry in addition to the market
price they will receive for their prod
ucts;" nor can it believe that the secre-
rotary believes it. 1t does be-
lieve, though. that when the cam
paign opens next year Uncle JERRY,
and all the pack of editors and
Spellbinder5 who want to see the
Republican party succeed again by the
old device of fooling the people, will be
vociferous in pointing to the sugar
bounty as proof positive of the loving
Daternalism of that party for the poor
Farmers and of its capacity to devise
measures for their financial betterment.
But the GLOBE has an abiding faith
that the farmers of this country are not
chumpS; that they do not sit OPEN
mouthed to swallow whatever the Uncle
JERRYs may tell them; and it doubts
not that they will see that it is the same
old tariff cat which is hidden under this
bounteouS coating of sugar. If they do
not see it in advance, they will both see
it and feel its claws when the bounties
are paid, and they realize who gets them
and who does not. They will see
that it is the same old policy of that
party TO grant bonuses to the manufact-
urers out of the taxes wrung from the
toll and earnings of labor. For. unlike
Germany. which pays small bounty on
the beets produced to the farmer raising
them, this American system" only
pays bounty to the man who makes
the sugar. Who does this? Who can
do 1t? The farmer? Our Minnesota
farmers have tried to make sugar from
the cane. Expensive machinery was
put into mill in the southern part of
the state few years ago, but the ey-
pertinent failed. What farmer with his
farm appliances ever secured the crys-
ta!iization of pound of sugar from the
syrup of the sorghum cane? And how
many dollars have been wasted in the
effort in the southern counties of the
state? And how can the farmer hope To
succeed now? He can undoubtedly
raise tile beets, but can he convert them
into sugar? To make sugar to sell the
farmer must be able TO reduce the cost
of production to the lowest point. This
requires machinery whose cost is be-