The Washington bee., 1897-10-30
SUGAR TRUST PROFITS.

John De Witt warner Makes some
Estimates and Scores the Tfust.
Ex-Congressman John De Witt war
ner is one of the best posted men IN TINS
country on sugar tariffs. When III con-
gress he carried the house for free
sugar. In a recently published state
ment he estimates the net protection
to the trust given by the Aldrich sched-
ule at from 35 cents to $1.14 on every
100 pounds of refined sugar.
Without attempting to give his argu-
ment as to each of the ways in which
the trust would be protected we give
his summary of trust profits as follows:
Specific differential (plus). ........$0 13q$O 4O
Thirty-five per cent. ad Valorem
differential. al.................. ...... 1fQ Y q
Countervailing duty, say.......... Vsg 30
Additional by substitution OF 20
per cent. ad Valorem for Speclhc -,
duties in low grades. s............. UoW 10
Total....... .............'..'.'.''''S ''SV oogSA Al
In the vast majority Of cases, however,
the actual result is between DO and 6O cents
per 100 pounds net protection to the trust,
and il is impracticable so to combine cir
cumstances as to bring this below 40 cents
or above 60 cents for any considerable
amount
AS an item of tariff taxation the
sugar schedule is ideal from the pro-
tectionist standpoint. Sugar is the one
article used by poor and rich to an
equal extent, and d tax on which there
fore falls most heavily on the poor in
proportion to their ability to pay it..
Its production and distribution are con-
trolled by a concern which is at once
the greatest of our mean trusts and the
meanest of our great ones.
1t is consistent therefore that on this
one article there should be levied more
than one-third of our total tariff taxa
ton, and that our people should be bur-
dened by tax of more than $90,0O0,0 900
that realizes less than $70,O00,000 for
the treasury and more than $20,000,000
for the sugar refining combine, while
the same combine is enabled to net
an additional $10,O00,OOO by the oppor-
tunity given to it to import at present
duty rates raw sugars from which it
can make refined to be sold by it under
the enhanced price assured it by the
proposed Aldrich schedule. The net
protection" of from As to 60 cents per
100 pounds given the trust on its rein
ing process alone should be considered
as sufficient when we remember that
the labor cost of this process is slightly
less than 61R cents per 100 pounds-that
is to say, Senator Aldrich, in behalf of
American labor, proposes unduly to tax
wage-earners in order to give the trust
from five to seven times as much PRO
lection" as it pays for all the labor in
yolved.
Next to the wage-earner the farmer
is dear to the prOtectionist heart, and
he is therefore equally favored by the
sugar schedule. Of late years through
out the eastern and middle and many of
the central states the competition of the
far west has driven our farmers from
grain raising into fruit culture. This
has now so developed that except for
exports of canned goods-jams, pre-
serves, etc.-in which we ought to sup
ply the world, the business of fruit rails
ing has, in its turn, become almost
proftless. And poverty is now assured
to those who are dependent upon fruit
culture by the proposed tax of two
cents pound on sugar. This increases
by from so to rs per cent. the article
which would make up from 40 to IS
per cent. of the total weight of the jams,
ETC., the export of which might insure
living prices for the surplus fruits, but
which is now practically prohibited.
And this is "a government of the
people, by the people and for the peo-
pie" Who are the ''people?"