The Washington times., 1909-05-13
A CHANGE FOR REAL REVIs-
ION. NO. Xxx.

necessary bonus of SI25.0OO.OOO to the
Sugar trust, there is every reason to
believe that we give to Mr.. Rookie
feller and his associates. If we as
Americans are willing to pay more for
every meal we eat for the dear sake of
Standard Oil, very well. 1t may be of
interest to some people, however, to
know how we might give the domestic
sugar producer the same protection he
now has, put from S5,OOO,OOO to S6,OOO,-
OO0ln the Treasury more than we now
get, and introduce real competition in
the sugar business of this nation, at
the expense of nobody but the trust.
We may do this by eliminating the
Joker" in the sugar schedules.
In the February, 1898, Forum, DIR.
Harvey w. Wiley suggested the fol-
lowing as the ideal sugar schedule:
Section l. All sugars imported into
the United States shall pay duty of
1925 cents per hundred pounds pure
sugar, as determined by the polari-
scope.
Section 3 All refined sugars i'm
ported into the United States polariz-
ing above 90 degrees shall rsy an sd-
ditional duty of l2.5 per hundred
pounds"
Do YOU miss anything from the
sacred language of the seheduIesG 1t
doesn't sound quite right, does itg
The thing which is left out by DR..
Wiley is the joker With that Joker
jeff out, there would be competition in
the sugar business. This joker is in
the words Sugars not above No. 10
Dutch standard" in the Payne bill.
Leave those words out of the law, and
sugar history will be changed-and
changed in favor of the consumer and
against monopoly. We do not accept
DR. Wiley's proposal fof a tariff rate;
burt the proposal to abolish what he
calls the obsolete" and "unscientific"
color test embodied in the Dutch stand
ard il unquestionably one which the
present Congress must adopt if it mas
ters the very simple questions involv-
cdr and acts in the interests of the
people rather than those of the trust.
There are two matters in the sugar
question which the average reader does
not understand, but which he may
easily master for all purposes of dis
cussion in five minutes. These are the
polariscope test and the Dutch stand
ard. The polariscope is an instrument
which takes a ray of light which IS
round like a log, and makes it Eat like
board. When sugar Is dissolved in
water, and this fat board Of light is
passed through it, the sugar twists the
board. The purer the sugar the more
it twists the light. The polariscope test
is made by measuring the amount of
this twisting. Honestly and carefully
done, it is very accurate test Of the
amount Of sugar in sample
The Dutch standard is a color test.
not n test of purity at all. II is
row of fourteen bottles of sugar rang
ing from No. Z, which is the darkest
sugar known, TO No. 20, which is white.
No. 10 is just dark enough so that the
lAs j
Dutch standard is prepared by sugar
brokers at Amsterdam and Rotterdam
every yearA They try to keep the
various BOTTLES filed with the same
colored sugar from year to year.
Now in the old days when the color
test was. the only one known, this row
of bottles in the various sugar markets
enabled the various dealers to buy and
sell more intelligently than if they had
had no bottles to compare the sugar
with. But now, as DIR. Wiley says. ''it
is a pitiable spectacle 10 see a great
nation, the largest consumer of sugar
in the world. confding the standard Of
its revenue to an irresponsible foreign
broker"
Why do we 50 confide it? All, that's
the Joker in the sugar schedule The
Dutch standard test is not retained out
of ignorance or backwardness, but as
means OF giving the trust a strangle-
hold on the American sugar business
The Dutch standard test has no rela-
tion TO the amount of sugar IN the
samplc-caly its color. Some sugars
whittier than No. I6 have less than s.
per cent sugar; and some darker than
No. 10 are almost 100 per cent pure.
And yet when sugar almost pure, but
darker than No. I6 comes in at the
custom house it pays the low duty Of
unrefned sugar But If it is lighter in
color than No. is, the duty at once
jumps to the sl95 hundred pounds of
refined sugar, whether it is refined or
not
Result: Il becomes necessary as a
business proposition to bring the dark
sugars in to get the low duty, and have