Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1902-03-22
WHO PUTS UP FOR 1T?
SYSTEMATIC MANUFACTURE OF
CUBAN SYMPATHY SENTIMENT.
Comes the Financial Backing of the
Literary Bureau That Is Working
Overtime In Behalf OF Foreign sugar
and Tobacco Growers.

We have received from the editor of
Republican daily newspaper in
Michigan the following pertinent in
quiry:
Editor The American Economist:
Whence comes all this vast quantity
of anonymous stuff on the subject Of
'-our duty toward Cuba? Somebody
puts up for it, and it costs lot If
money. Who Is it?
1t would be useless to deny that a
tremendous sentiment has been work
ed up in behalf of tariff concessions on
raw sugar and tobacco from Cuba.
The term worked up" is used advis-
edly- There is plenty of evidence of
method and design in the sympathetic
campaign that has been in progress for
several weeks past. The evidence as to
the origin and propagation of this
sympathetic sentiment is not so plain
1t must be inferred, since it cannot be
positively located and defined. Ger
tain 1t is, however, that powerful
agencies have been employed for the
purpose, first, OF convincing the peo-
pie that they owe som ething to Cuba
and, second, that the payment of this
obligation should fall exclusively upon
two branches of American agricultural
industry, the producers of cane and
beet sugar and of tobacco. 1t is a
curious fact that in all these pleas for
Cuban relief, all these plans for dis
charging our Just obligations" and
for performing our plain duty" to-
ward Cuba, no one has suggested that
any portion whatsoever of the sacri-
fees involved should fall upon the in
situations that would reap the largest
benefits therefrom in dollars and cents.
We mean the sugar trust and the to-
bacco trust That powerful monopoly
whose surplus earnings are, as Mr..
Havemeyer testified before the indus
trial commission year ago, so often
used for other purposes than the pay
ment of dividends, not only is not call
ed upon to bear any part of the bur-
den of relieving Cuba, but stands to
realize immense profits in the opera
ton The sugar trust is not only not
asked to contribute in the shape of "A
decreased duty on refined sugar, but it
is seriously proposed by the sympathy
generators that the sugar trust shall
be enriched by being permitted to buy
its raw sugar from % to so per cent
less than it now pays, while preserving
intact the price of refined sugar. We
nave MI. f1dVen6y0I authority lot
this statement. Less than three weeks
since the sugar trust magnate stated
publicly that any reduction that might
be made in the duty on Cuban raw
sugar would in no way affect the mar
ket price of refined sugar. The sugar
trust occupies the curiously favored
position of being able to say to the
domesuc producers of cane and beet
III wiz a
lose.'' 1t is, IN fact, seriously ques-
tionabie whether the entire bulk of re-
duction of tariff duties on Cuban raw
sugar would not go directly into the
treasury of the sugar trust, and none
of it to the distressed planters. There
is much reason to think that this
would be the case. In the hearing be-
fore the ways and means committee a
few days ago, Mr.. Edwin F. Atkins
of Boston, himself a Cuban planter,
told the committee, in reply to a ques-
ton of Chairman Payne, that "a very
large percentage of the CUBAN sugar
industry is owned by citizens of the
United States" Mr.. Atkins urged that
the duty on Cuban sugar should be
abolished altogether. Naturally!
The tobacco trusts occupy toward
Cuban tobacco production practically
the same relation held by the sugar
trust regarding Cuban sugar. An
American syndicate and an English
syndicate own and control more than
80 per cent Of the raw and manufac-
tured tobacco produced in the island of
Cuba. The success of these syndicates
in securing a reduction of duties on
raw and manufactured tobacco would
bring vast profits to them, while the
sufferers would be the entire tobacco
growing industry of the United States
and a domestic manufacturing indus
try that employs as many adult work
people as there are inhabitants in the
island of Cuba.
Is there not a clue herein to be
found to the secret machinery and
manipulation by which this tremen-
deus sympathy in behalf of Cuba has
been worked up? Somebody is doing
a vast amount of work under cover.
Who is it2 Somebody is flooding the
country with printed matter settling
forth the dire needs of Cuba and the
plain duty of our people in that re-
gard. Who is it? Somebody is send
ing through the mails tons of litera-
ture calculated to cause US to remem-
Der Cuba and forget our own people.
Who is it? Every editor in the United
States is receiving this literature in
almost every mail Who sends it?
Who pays for it? Is it the spontane-
Gus expression of sympathetic souls or
is it the output of the sugar trust and