The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1900-06-23
SUGAR TRUST TRICK.
Democrats Try to Make 1t Pres
emit of $I4, 900, 900.
Ways md Means Committee Sat
Down Upon Effort to Give the
Dig Combine Free
Sugar.


Sugar.
An interesting report submitted to
the house of representatives by the
ways and means committee was that
upon the joint resolution offered by
Mr.. Richardson (dem.), of Tennessee,
the leader of the minority, to admit
free of duty sugar and molasses and
everything entering into the manu-
facture of sugar from Cuba and Por-
to Rico. The report reads in part as
follows:
'-1his measure Is one of a series OF
measures looking to the same re-
suit. J The first was an effort during
the progress of the Porto Rican tariff
bill, so-called in the senate, to place
upon that bill an amendment re-
storing to persons who had paid tar
iff taxes upon commodities entered at
the port of New York and elsewhere
in the United States from Porto Rican
ports the amount of duties thus paid
by them. Ihe amount covered by
the amendment of Hon. James X.
Jones to the Porto Rican bill in the
senate on sugar and molasses alone
amounted to S1,4s7,s66, as appears by
the report of the secretary of the
treasury, and had that amendment
been placed upon the Porto Rican bill
1.-the American Sugar Refining COM
pany and A. S. Lascelles q Co., part
of the same concern, would have re-
ceiyed gross sum approXimating
S1,200,GO0. This would have been
direct gift from the public treasury
to the sugar trust of that sum of
money, and would have been the first
successful effort to appropriate money
directly TO a trust. Following that
abortiye effort comes this resolution,
and if this resolution should pass it
would place upon the free list the
molasses and sugar hereafter to be
imported into the United States from
Cuba and Porto Rico. The present
product of Porto Rico amounts to
something like 10000 tons this year,
and would not be very considerable
sum of money, but when there is in
cluded in this proposed addition to
the free list the products OF Cuba the
item becomes an enormous one"
The report. then gives table show
ing the total dutiable imports of mo-
lasses and sugar into the United States
during the year ended June 80, 1889,
and the total from Cuba and Porto
Rico for the same year. From this
statement it appears that those Islands
furnish "a $40 per cent. in quantity and
81 lilo per cent in value of the total
dutiable importations of those COM
modities, and that the total amount of
duties collected on Porto Rican and
Cuban sugars imported into the United
States that year was $14,010. 4s6.F. The
report of the committee continues:
1T will be seen that to place these
commodities on the free list would, if
the same amount of sugar and mo-
lasses should be imported during the
year beginning July /, 1900, and run
ming forward, give to the importers of
sugar and molasses something like $14,-
900, 900. This would be a free gift from
the people of the country and measures
the value of the proposed yearly gift
to the sugar trust. calculated on the
importations of 1899, which, of course,
will steadily increase from year to
year.
There is probably no commercial
organization or trust with a more thor
oughly we'll organized and self-depend-
ing capacity than is the American
Sugar Refining company, and it must
be borne in mind that there is no sugar
refined in Cuba, or, if any, only the
merest trace or small quantity, and
that all cane sugar unrefined that
comes from that country, or substan-
tally all of it, is received and refined
by the American Sugar Refining COM
pany, or, perhaps, one of the kindred
| organizations which were started by
the manager of that company, to be
| under the same umbrella with the
sugar trust. The tariff of 1897. so far
as relates to sugar and molasses, was
intended to be both a revenue producer
and matter of protection to the beet
sugar industry Of the United States.
To now remove that protection would
be q fatal blow TO that valuable and
growing industry, and would strip the
| treasury at once of one Of it's most re-
liable sources of revenue, and the sole
effect, so far as immediate and great
gain to any one, would be to hand over
to a great corporation, now enjoying
enormous prosperity, degree Of aid
and assistance in accommodating larger
wealth that would shock the con-
science of the American people"
As Reformers.
by suppressing the colored vote In
the south, by getting all the Tam
manu- forces IN work hard in New