The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-28

presence, then we are doomed We will have the sugar disease in its compound and worst form. Unfortunately the latter is most likely to be our lot.
 We consume about 5,200, 0O0,0 ,000 pounds of sugar a year. The import duty, incluc- ing the countervailing duties, amounts to 2.25 cents per pound As the trust keeps the price of refined sugar up to the tariff level, our 76,O0O,0OO of people actually pay a sugar tax of $1170O0,00O a year. As only $63,0 900 of this tax reaches our treas ury, $54, 000 went to fatten our petted sugar trust. About half went to our SHavemeyers of the refining trust who have been dictating our legislation for the past fifteen years, and the rest went to our Oxnards and Spreckles, produc- ing beet and cane sugar, and who have only recently assumed control of affairs at Washington and shaped legislation their own way as stated, dislodging the former. Meanwhile, the lowest wholesale price of granulated sugar is 419 cents in- stead of 2A cents per pound, as it would be with free" sugar. This sugar tax amounts to $7.5O to $S per family an nually. It Is such a burden upon our canning and preserving industries that we import great quantities of jelies, jams and marmelades, after paying B per cent on them, from Scotland. where sugar is cheap; while millions of bushels of our small fruits must rot on the trees each year because the high prices of sugar makes preserving unprofitable and keeps canneries out of most fru1t-grow1ng sec tions. With free sugar, thousands of farms in the middle, eastern and south ern states, now worth less than the mort gages, would again become profitable and valuable, thousands of people would fna employment in the fruit and preserving industries, which would sprsng up on all sides while millions of poor worlSingmen and their families would be provided with such cheap and wholesome foods and del- icacies This is an example.
 Upon this subject the New York World has this to say:
 "The treasury actually collected over s62 100000 in duties on imported sugar last year. The duty on raw sugar is $19 per ton, and that increased the cost of our own domestic sugar product (about 500 GOO tons) to the consumer by $15 000 This shows a total of S77 100000 taken from the peoples pockets in order to fill the feeding bottles of the two raw sugar babies-beet and cane. What does it cost to feed the refined sugar infant-the trust? Oxnard, the beet sugar king. says German refined sugar would flood our market at less than 2 cents pound but for the tariff. And the trust now de- clares that even if the little .'differentiar' of $2.50 ton is taken off, German cheap sugar will invade us. If this be so then of the S39 a ton duty on refined su- gar $35.50 must be clear increase in the cost of the peoples sugar. On an annual consumption of about 2,400000 tons this means a yearly tax of sS7,600,000 to be paid by the people to the trust, if MT. Oxnard's interesting statement be true.
 The monopoies can only be protected by plundering the people. The duty on refined sugar Is tariff for monopoly only"
 Echoing this closing sentiment of the . world, why not let Us try this experi- ment of free sugar? Why not enjoy some of the good things of this life our selves instead of taxing ourselves that our favored few"-a mere handful--of Oxnards, Havenmeyers and Spreckels may revel in luxury and boldly bribe and corrupt congress? When, oh when, my fellow countrymen, will we learn wis., dom?
 In conclusion, my friends, our people of this great country are patient, as they have also undeniably been long suffering, but it is only question of thought, of education, when they can fathom the intricacies of this complex tariff taxation with which they have been saddled and
 
 appear involved and anything but 1umin- ous to the lay mind. Realizing this fact I have sought today to lay before you the foregoing plain statement of facts in or der to clarify the situation and set you to pondering over these living, vital is- sues of the day. The longer you ponder and the clearer becomes your compre- hension, the more indignant and out ragged, I venture to say, you will become over the infamous system of protective tariff which has been well described as a ''by-way leading to the trust castle of Giant Despair, who gets rich and despotic by taxing the poor dupes who dwell in his stolen dominions." It is this giant ,despot, the trust which fattening on the vitals of a so far submissive vic- tim can say:
 q am monarch of all survey,
 My right there is none to disputei