New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-05-26
A TIMELY REPORT MADE.
MR.. RICHARDSON'S PROPOSED GIFT TO
THE SUGAR TRUST DENOUNCED
BY THE WAYS AND MEANS
COMMITTEE.
IBy TELEGRAPH TO THE rRrBUNE.l

Washington, May 25-General Grosvenor
submitted in the House to-day from the Ways
and Means Committee adverse report on the
joint resolution offered by Mr.. Richardson Of
Tennessee. the leader OF the minority, TO admit
free Of duty sugar and molasses and every
thing entering into the manufacture of sugar
from Cuba and Porto Rico. This resolution and
report are likely to cut some figure in the APP
preaching Presidential campaign. The report
reads in part follows:
This measure is one of series of measures
looking to the same result. 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 restoring to persons who
had paid tariff 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. The
amount covered by the amendment of the Hon
James K. Jones to the Porto Rican bill in the
Senate on sugar and molasses alone amounted
to 81. SEC. appears by the report of the
Secretary of the Treasury, and had that amend
nent been placed upon the Porto Rican bill
+. d.. . the American Sugar Refining Company
and A S. Lascelles & Co, part OF the same
concern would have received gross sum APP
prox1mating 81 100000. This would have been
a direct gift from the public treasury to the
Sugar Trust of that sum of money, and would
have been tie first successful effort TO appro-
pirate 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 here
after to be imported into the United States from
Cuba and Porto Rico. The present product of
Porto Rico amounts to something like sixty
thousand tons this year. and would not be a
very considerable sum of money, but when there
is included in this proposed addition to the free
list the products of Cuba the item becomes an
enormous one.
VALUE OF THE PROPOSED GIFT.
The report then gives a table showing the
total dutiable imports of molasses and sugar
into the United States during the year ended
June so, 1899, and the total from Cuba and
Porto Rico for the same year From this state
ment ii 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 commodities. and that the total amount of
duties collected Porto Rican and Cuban
sugars imported into the United States that year
s14.O10. 4S6 AZ. 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 molasses should be imported during
the year beginning July i, 1900. and running
forward. give to the importers of sugar and
mclaSses something like S14.O0O.00O This would
be free gift from the people of the country
and measui es the value of the proposed yearly
gift TO the Sugar Trust, calculated on the i'm
portatons of 1899. which, of course, will steadily
increase from year to year.
There Is probably no commercial organization
or trust with more thoroughly well organized
and self-depending capacity than is the Ameri-
can 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, aid that all cane sugar unrefined that
comes from that country, or substantially all of
it. is received and refined by the American Sugar
Renning Company, or, perhaps. one of the kim
dred organizations which 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 a matter of protection to the beet
sugar industry of the United States To now
remove that protection would be a fatal blow to
that valuable and growing industry, and would
strip the Treasury at once of one of its most
reliable 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 conscience of the American
people.
BOTH UNWISE AND UNJUST
There is TO your committee no conceivable
good that could come OF this scheme 1t could
not benefit the American people, for it would
stimulate the refining of sugar in the United
States. Ii would take from the people of Porto
Rico the small pittance of income which the -
per cent duty their sugar now yields to them,
and it would bring into immediate contact and
competition with the cane sugar of the United
States and the beet sugar of the United States
the enormous product of the island of Cuba.
There have not been set any limitations upon
the product Of that island, and American money,
will doubtless make of that island almost one
undivided cane sugar plantation, and the posi-
bilities of the competition with the cane sugar
of the United States are almost beyond eSti-
mate and we think to turn over the sugar pro-
ducers of the United States to the devastation
of this product when the sole interest and result
would be enormously to enrich the great cor
poratlons now holding practical monopolieS OF
the manufacture of sugar would be unjust and
unwise a measure of legislation and we
therefore recommend that the joint resolution