The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1900-02-08
The Official Paper of San Juan County.
THURSDAY. FEBRUARY s, 1907
A SOUR VIEW OF SUGAR AND TRUSTS.


is most excellent publication and one
of the most widely circulated of its
class in the country, but out here
where territorial and commercial ex-
pansion are not nightmare and where
the farmers have no fear of being over
wheimed by Oriental labor it would
suit us a trifle better if its editorial
notes were not often notes of discord,
containing SYMPTOMS that its EDITORS
liver is little out of order. Though
generally bright and CHEEKY and re.
plete with good suggestions and advice,
it seems to take sort of dyspeptic view
of many questions of interest to farmers
that are too broad to be considered in
narrow ways. In the February num-
Der, for instance, it notes with evident
disapproval that under the impetus OF
American development the production
of sugar in Cuba is likely to increase
within three or four years from one
million tons annually, produced in her
worst ante-insurrection days, to ten
million tons, and it views with alarm
also the project to put OH new steam
ship line between New York ond Ha-
wall, sowing to the vast increase of the
quantity of sugar grown in the islands.
The Journals solicitude upon these
phases of the expansion question is
evidently due to its fear, hardly well
founded, that the immense increase i'm
cane sugar production certain to result
from the new conditions in Cuba,
Puerto Rico, Hawaii and the Philip
pines is likely to have u depressing
effect upon the beet sugar production
in the United States. This is not the
position of the men who framed the
sugar schedule of the Dingley tariff
law, now in force, in the interest of the
beet sugar industry of this country, for
the late Mr.. Dingley and his associates
i'm the framing of that measure were
among the strongest supporters of Ha-
waiian annexation, as also of what has
come to be known as the Expansion
policy" of the Mckinley administra
ton. The production of beet sugar in
the United States has increased very
rapidly within the past few years, but
this increase will have to be continued
at the same rapid rate for quite num-
Der of years before American beet sugar
will constitute more than very small
part of the total amout of sugar con-
sumed In this country. And there
seems to te no good reason to assume
that this increase of home production
will not continue. There was no duty
upon cane sugar from Hawaii even be-
fore annexation, and as to the increase
of production since then there is little
likelihood that it has been or will be
any greater there or elsewhere. than
market conditions justify. The farm
ers of the country have no reason to
fear that sugar will become any too
plentiful or too cheap.
The Journal is also violent oppo-
nent of trusts, which is all right enough
whenever they are combinations in
restraint of trade" but besides seeing a
hobgoblln in every existing trust it
seems to be troubled with Nightmares
about altogether improbable conbina-
tons which it would have the farmers
stand in terror of as Hamlet did the
ghost of Banquo. In the current issue
it says:
ut would not surprise us if the mo.
nopolists should turn their attention
before long to agriculture. A trust can
buy up millions of acres of the richest
land and farm it by cheap labor, obtain
special terms from the railroad COM
panies, control the markets, and drive
millions of small farmers out of bust
ness. 1t is only question of time be.
fore the attempt will be made"
This is the veriest nonsense. Ii the
Farm Journal, which prides itself upon
being unlike any other paper" never
experiences any alarming diminution
of tue great number of its subscribers
until such II result is brought about
through the formation of a gigantic ag-
ricultural octopus, it will continue to
be a welcome visitor in many thous-
ands of homes for many years to come.