The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1912-04-02
NO FEAR BUT some
Nervousness SHOWN
Stock Market Stagnant, but No
One Believes Free Sugar Bill
Will Become Law.

In period of rather dull business
and almost stagnation in the stock
market, Honolulu is getting hint of
what might happen if a free sugar bill
should pass congress. The mere dis
cussion of the matter appears to have
hit business pretty hard, even though
not single we'll informed person has
been found willing to express the
opinion that the bill can become law.
Correspondence from Judge s. NJ.
Ballou, planters agent in Washington,
is of the same general tenor as the
views expressed here by E. Faxon
Bishop and others. Secretary w. O..
Smith of the planters association said
yesterday that Ballou's letters indi-
Gated no great fear of the free sugar
bill becoming law. The Sugar Factors
Company's advices are to the same eff
feet. "our letters, both from Wash
ington and from our New York COM
mittee,'' said secretary and manager
A. NJ. NOVEL;, "indicate that there is
not much worry over the proposition. -
Cuban Outlook Bad.
As affecting the probable price of
sugar, reports from Cuba of bad crops
contain the suggestion that the retail
price of the finished product would be
soaring in the United States now, were
it not for the domestic cane and beet
production. After a review of the vari-
Gus conflicting reports of the year about
the Cuba crop, the Louisiana Planter
comes to the conclusion that the situa-
tion in Cuba and Porto Rico is bad.
Under date of March 16, it says:
"Here we are come to the middle of
March, with all of the correspondents,
merchants and statisticians of Cuba, at
sea concerning estimates of the Cuban
sugar crop already more than half har-
vested. But it will be noted that they
are all unanimously complaining that
the yield of the cane is still very low,
less in March than the normal yield in
the middle of January, or only about
nine per cent. of the weight of the cane
against a normal midwinter yield of
eleven per cent.
H'This signifies that where 220 pounds
of sugar to the ton of cane are normal
ly turned out in the middle of January,
but $50 pounds to the ton are being
made two months later in the middle
of March.
"That decrease, if general, would Of
itself signify reduction of 100000
1 long tons of the optimistic summer
estimates. But numbers of authorities
called pessimistic by most of the opti-
mistic correspondents are now begin
ming to predict total yield for the
island this year of only 100000 tons,
or more than 100000 tons below the
record crop of two years since.
"This week the Louisiana Planter is
in receipt of private information from
American friends, prominently en-
ployed in leading Cuban sugar factories,
and machinery agents, who have COW
cred the entire Island of Porto Rico,
that the situation in the larger island
! is about as bad as the lowest estimators
figure in both islands, that the Cuban
sugar crop is likely to fall below that
| of last year, when less than 100000
! tons were made; and that the situation
is relatively the same in our own lesser
island of Porto Rico, due in the latter
island to the same causes, that the crop
was really inferior and is strangely
unripe for the advanced season of the
harvest.
"Taken altogether there seems to
have been for the season of 1911 a
singular fatality or general falling-off
in all of the sugar crops in the western
half of the world. The best sugar crop
of western Europe was short about two
million tons; and that of the West
Indies promises a shortage at this writ
ing of half a million.
"Our own American cane and beet
sugar crops in the same season have
fallen off less than five per cent. below
their average annual production, and
only about ten per cent. below their
highest summer expectations.
"And we may well wonder, if it were
not for that $4,000 or 100000 tons of
home sugar we made last year and are
annually making in these United States,
what our good people would be paying
now for sugar, with a 100000 ton
shortage in the western half of the
world, where sugar consumption is at
its highest, and an additional elimina-
tion of eight or nine hundred thousand
tons of our American home sugar crop
of beet and cane grown by our Amer
lean farmers and planters. !"
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