The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1905-02-03
Another Beet Sugar Struggle For Life.

Beet sugar manufacturers of Mich
igan are once more called upon to
fight an assault upon the industry.
1t seems that this Is an infant indus
try which there is determined pur-
pose to strangle in it's earliest years.
1t may be that its history is to paral-
lei that of the tin plate industry, but
the sugar beet certainly is having a
harder row to hoe than the tin plate
had. Tin plate elected the interest
and friendship of a larger scope of
country and business capital than the
sugar beet. The latter is necessarily
confined by soil and climate conditions
to comparatively limited sections of the
country-it can hope only to draw from
those sections the opposition to the
determined assaults upon it.
A little more than year ago it was
necessary, in order Ito keep faith" with
the Cubans, to strike the American
beet sugar industry severe blow,
Barely saved from going under from
that shock. it held on through tact and
implied, if not direct, assurances that it
would be left alone to struggle with it's
problems and endeavor by economies
and experience in growing and manu-
featuring to save itself from destruc-
tion. Bear in mind that the manufac-
ture of beet sugar is the only industry
in the north that is allied with agricul-
ture, the only one in which the farmer
saw promise of diversifying his crops
by adding one that gave returns beyond
all others, and that, despite the reduc-
ton in tariff favoring Cuban raws
which the manufacturer has had to
stand, the grower gets as much for his
bcets as he did before 'our plain duty"
to Cuba induced congress to take over
the gold brick concealed in the duty
reduction Now the industry is called
upon to sacrifice itself for the Filipinos,
because Secretary Taft sees another
plain duty which cannot be discharg-
ed without strangling the little sugar
infant here at home and stimulating
into lusty giant the cheap-labor cane
sugar industry in the islands that
Dewey took.
Michigan men. men from the Sag
inaw valley, are down at Washington
ON the same errand that impelled them
there little more than a year ago
the necessity of trying to induce con-
gress to keep faith with the beet sugar
makers. Before they are through with
their task they will find that
they will have to fight hard, because
powerful influences are against
them; the nature of their case
does not appeal to the Indifference of
congressman who are outside the sugar
belt; and there is pressure for tariff
revision of some sort anyway. They
are making their protest strong and
they are extremely well fortified with
fact, figures and reliable data. some of
them from the publications of the
government. This is what Washing
ton dispatch says they will show:
'In the Philippines there are 6O,0O0,-
600 acres of sugar land. 1t is richer
soil than the Hawaii sugar plantations,
which produce 80 to 40 tons of cane per
acre, while the Louisiana lands produce
an average of but II tons. In the
Philippines cane field hands can be
hired from So to 50 per month. The
maximum cost of producing 100 weight
of raw sugar is but 95 cents, and the
freight from Manila to New York by
steamship is but 20 cents per 100 pounds.
The Michigan sugar manufactures have
to pay the beet growers price for beets
that is equivalent to 1888 per 100
weight of sugar, and in the matter Of
freight they have to pay 10 cents per
100 from the Saginaw factories to
Grand Rapids-less than 200 miles-or
so per cent as much as a producer in
the Philippines can have the cane
carried 10000 miles to the port Of New
York. They have to pay 10 cents per
100 from any Michigan factory to
Chicago. The Dingley tariff rate on
raw sugar is $1.6S per 100. Two years
ago congress made a reduction of 20
per cent, or AZ cents per 100, on
Philippine sugar. Now it is proposed
to knock off so per cent more, or S.. 26
altogether. This will leave but AZ cents
duty and will enable the Philippine
grower to get his sugar to New York,
refine it, and put it on the market at
but a few cents over So per 100, as
againt So 80 that the Michigan manufac
turer has to pay the farmer in the first
place for the sugar in the beet; and last
season the Michigan beet growers were
paid 81, 26S, 900 for their crop.
'In the Philippines they have never
had the great modern sugar mills, nor
has the sugar growing industry sbeen
developed on anything like the scale it
was developed in Spanish times in Cuba.
But with the tariff down to So per 100,
and corporations empowered to hold as
high as 10000 acres of government
sugar land and the cheap labor and