The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1894-11-02
SUGAR PROTECTION.
Why Florida and Louisiana Should Sup
port the Republican Party.

! port the Republican Party.
EDITOR LOUISIANA PLANTER-I note
with no small degree of interest the
change in front of your correspondents
ON tho great question Of protection to
home industries as well Us the great
political revolution among the planters
of your state.
It is human nature to boast 81 told
you So, and so l can revert to COM
muuication furnished your paper last
February, in which / urged your people
to align themselves with tho Repub-
lican idea Of free sugar and the bounty
for the balance of the 10 years contract.
If ever people held on with sublime
fidelity to party, it was the planters of
Louisiana during the last disastrous six
months congress. And that they failed
to revolt in time to defeat the passage
of the late tariff bill is source of Won
der to many of us. That they have now
cut loose, and forever from party that
on every stump and through every or
gan avows their eternal and unrelent-
ing determination to exterminate the
last vestige of protection is hut reason
able and the only thing possible.
There may be some planters who hope
that they will be carried safely into port
by others, and they hold on to their
time honored party affiliations.
But as one who knows somewhat of
the feeling of the Republican party, and
especially in the western states, ven
ture the opinion that if sugar is saved
to the state of Louisiana, where nine
tenths of our home product is raised,
she must give the assurance that the
whole sugar and rice interests of the
south are soundly converted" fully
adopted" and measurably ''sancti-
fed
That the beet sugar industry could
and would soon equal the cane product
in the United States, under careful fos-
tering to both, do not doubt. But the
west is unlimited in resources, and the
spirit of enterprise that characterizes
the very sections that are now expert
menting most in sugars would hastily
transform and transfer their industry
into something else and dash on, scarce
ly leaving ripple to mark the spot
where their money was buried. Not so
with Louisiana and the south. There is
neither the opportunity nor the DISPOSE
tion to change. Your vast plantation
cannot be put to cultivation of any
product that is not now fully overdone
or that is in any wise equal to sugar in
the past. Your sugar houses would go
into decay, your lcvees go down and
desolation spread once again over your
great state.
Florida ought to stand side by side
with Louisiana, for there is nothing to
be compared with sugar to build up her
great 'waste places" but her people
like what "Nasby" said of his relations
would 'rather die with the use of
Democracy than to be saved by any 9TH
or remedy"
Ignorance is bliss" indeed, but sad
will be the awakening if friendly hands
do not steady the ark in this time OF
danger. No silly idea of 'negro SUI
premacy" should divert vote from the
national Republican movement i'll
Louisiana.
''Negro supremacy" has not ensued
in Alabama and Georgia during the ex-
citing divisions of the last few years,
and the greater and more permanent the
division the less the danger.
AS a southern Republican of northern
antecedents l say give us good white
party, with protection as its keynote,
aud none. will be more active to prevent
"negro domination" than the Yankees
in your midst.
JOHN THoS. PORTER.