The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1908-03-06
Congressman Fordney Replies to
Beet Grower.

Beet Grower"
In copy of the Evening Argus, O
date, February II, 1908, which l re.
ceived there is an article on the front
page referring to my attitude toward
Mr.. Taft and l would reply to this
gentleman, who signs himself as
Sugar Beet Grower" as follows:
l ask him if he knows that Philip
pine sugar, under old and modern
methods of manufacture, can and is
now being produced and delivered free
on board ship at Manila, at a cost of
three quarters OF a cent per pound
and does he know that the freight
rate from Manila to New York on
that sugar is $3.50 per gross ton of
2,240 10 or one-fourth of cent per
pound. Does he also know that the
sugar trust is refining such sugar
here for four-tenths of a cent per
pound? Now, add one-half cent per
pound for profit, which would be a
fair profit and the total sum would be
one and nine-tenths cents per pound.
Add the present rate of duty on Phil
ippine sugar, S1.26 per hundred 10
which is 75 per cent OF the rate fixed
in the Dingley tariff jaw, which,
would make a total sum of 3.16 cents
per pound. This is what it costs to
place Philippine sugar on our market.
refined, at the present time. in COM
petition with sugar extracted from
beets, raised by somebody in Shiawas-
see township.
And does this gentleman know
that the average cost Of the sugar, in
the beets, delivered at the beet sugar
factories in Michigan was $2.61 per
hundred pounds this last year and
the cost to the factory to convert this
into sugar and place it on the market
is about IA cents per pound; add
this to the above sum and he will see,
that to produce a pound of sugar
from beets in the state of Michigan
this last year, it cost, in round num-
bers, cents per pound.
Reduce the price of sugar in our
markets and you Immediately affect
the price of beets. raised by Michigan
farmers. No sugar factory can sur
vive and continue to do business and
place sugar upon the market that
cost that factory cents per pound
to produce, when our laws will fix a
tariff on foreign imported sugar so
low that such foreign sugar can be
produced in the markets of the world
and brought to the United States and
placed upon our markets and sold, at
profit and at price less than it
costs to produce sugar in this coun-
try. That ought to be plain to every
man as business proposition and in
the face of this, Will the writer say,
over his own signature, that he is in
favor of such a policy, which would
crush out our home industries. If so,
please give me your name. He would
be an enemy to his own interest and
that of his neighbors.
He refers to the letter of DR.. Kiteh-
en- and states that it just about
strikes him right. Or. Kitchen, a
Republican, makes plea for the con-
sumer, by using a Democratic free
trade argument. That is to say, that
by throwing down the tariff wall and
letting in foreign products free of
duty. the article can be placed in the
hands of the consumer at a less cost
and he would therefore be benefited.
I will agree with my Shiawassee
township friend, that under free
trade, the consumers of this country
can buy the necessaries of life at
less price than they can under high
protective tariff, but when they have
transferred to a foreign country, the
labor that produces those articles
and robbed the American farmer and
the American laboring man of the
opportunity to produce, at home,
such articles as canbe produced here,
ne takes away from that farmer and
that laboring man, his purchasing
power; for the only purchasing power
the laboring man has, is what he re-
ceives in return for the sweat of his
brow and the muscle and bone that
ne gives to his employer
For example, let us go to the ex-
Ireme to help our unnamed Shiawas-
see township farmer. in his argument
Suppose We adopt the policy of clos
I'm up every American institution
which pays high prices for its labor,
ar even fair price and transfer
that industry to the Philippines, or
10 China, or to Japan, or any foreign
country, where labor receives starva-