The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1896-11-24
No BOUNTY ON SUGAR
\ POWERFUL AND CLEAR PRE-
SENTATION OF THE CASE.
Probable Course of American Legisla-
ton of Interest to Hawaii-Instead
of Bounty Duty.
lNnshington Post. October 2el

Editor Post:-In the present eXcit-
ing political campaign some of the
free trade fanatics are foolishly try
ing to convince the people that in the
event of Republican success at the
polls in November, in both Presiden-
tial and Congressional elections, the
obnoxious sugar bounty will surely be
restored.
Now, let us look at that sugar boun-
ty question from an independent
standpoint, and compare it, as far as
it concerns our American sugar-pro-
ducing interests, with incidental tar
iff protection. And, further, let us see
how, as far as the government inter
ests are concerned, the bounty system
compares with the imposition and col
lection of reasonable revenue duties
on imported sugars.
Those chiefly interested in these rel
ative questions are the sugar planters
of Louisiana. With vigor born of
desperation, they fought against the
first proposition of the bounty sys-
TEN, which was advanced by Senator
John Sherman in his Senate substi-
tute for the Mills bill in the Fftieth
Congress. When the bounty system
was again brought up in far more at
tractive shape in the Mckinley tariff
bill of the Fifty-irst Congress those
same Louisiana planters bitterly and
actively opposed this measure, through
their representatives in Congress, in
special conventions of all their com
mercial exchanges, and in called meet
ings of their parish and state associa-
tions. Feeling convinced that they
would be falsely regarded by the fol-
lowers of all other agricultural indus
tries as the favored beneficiares of
governmental aid they protested
against the measure. Knowing that
they would lose the incidental protec-
ton of 2 cents to 2.35 ents pound
of the tariff, to receive i'm return there
for but "a to 2 cents a pound in the
proposed bounty substitute, they op-
ness standpoint.
When the Mckinley bill was finally
passed those people were compelled to
lose the larger benefits of tariff, pro.
lection and to accept he lesser com
pensation which they had vainly
struggled against with all of their per-
sonal and political strength, instead
of having begged for as suppliants
from a paternal Government as their
free trade foes tried to make them ap-
pear before the country.
In the three years that the McKin-
ley bill, with its sugar bounty system,
was in force, the Louisiana sugar
planters lost each year about third
of cent IA pound on their products,
compared with the prices they would
have received under the tariff law pre-
vailing before the bounty legislation
was enacted, or their relative loss
| from the change in the laws amounted
to between S4,000,000 and $1,000, 900.
That is, in the space of time men
toned, they would have gained that
much more money from the incidental
protection of the sugar tariff than in
the direct bounty substituted therefor
on the abolition of that tariff.
Now, in those same three years,
from 1891 to 1894, the Government sac
rificed nearly $1sO,OOO,OOO in gold
through the loss of the sugar rev
enues, while it paid out in bounties
about $30,000,000, or it deliberately
depleted its own treasury of some
5000 200, 900.
/ Under the changed laws the people
had apparently cheaper sugar, as they
purchased it at the grocery. But it
was really costing them the same old
price after all, as they were paying
for it indirectly in other ways than
| showed in their grocery bills. Sugar
tariff, or no sugar tariff, they had To
keep straight along paying expenses
of government, and pay somewhere
else for that apparent reduction in
their private sugar bills, for what the
Government lost on the abolished
sugar tariff it had to gain on other
things to keep itself out of debt and
away from bankruptcy.
The sugar tariff had been an almost
ideal tax.
First; II cost the people of the
country less than a dollar a head an.
/ nually,
Second: 1t was tax paid by al
the people.
Third: 1t was "A tax falling light OF
the poor and heavier on the rich, OF
distributed according to the quality