Arizona republican., 1918-01-03
HOOVER ADVOCATES
 CONTROL OF SUGAR BY THE GOVERNMENT
Continued from Page D

(Continued from Page D
 tended to cause discomfort among the people.
 The administrator explained his de- sire to have the food administrations YleW of the sugar situation presented early in the investigation by saying that testimony before the committee that there was plenty of sugar in the country was not proved by the facts as he knew them and tended to offset | the administration campaign for con- Servation. He said he regarded it as vital that his statement should coun- teract the testimony as quickly as pos
 sible and thought his own statement on
 the situation would be more convincing l than that of George M. Rolph, head of | the administration sugar division. l The witness denied that the Cuban l price had been fixed by a committee 1 formed of refinerS at a price advantag- 1 eous to them. The price, he said, was | fixed by the state department and the | International Sugar committee and had nothing to do with it. The Cuban gov
 ernment wanted 5.25 cents a pound, he 1 said.
 The committee deemed this too high and as the state department then was negotiating with the Cuban govern
 ment on the matter, the committee
 dropped it. A price of $46O finally was
 agreed upon by the state department
 and the Cuban government, he said | MT. Hoover defended the food adminis-
 tration's action in naming the presi- dent of the American Sugar Refining
 company, an officer of the Arbuckle l Refining company and MT Rolph as
 the American members of the commit
 tee, saying this country could be rep
 resented properly only by refiners. We are primarily dependent in
 these times on patriotic men who un-
 derstand their businesses" said the ad-
 ministrator Tt is impossible for me
 to go into all the details, but reserve
 final decision to myself and I take full
 responsibility
 Much was said today of the economic , soundness of price fixing. Senator Lodge cited authorities to show that ii , had failed and read some of Hoover's testimony at the hearing on the food bill in which he was quoted as saying pricf fixing had been failure in Eng
 lane. The witness explained that when l he so testified England did not contro | commodities on which it attempted tc ' fix prices. He argued that price fix , Ing of government controlled commod. ities was advisable to meet an emer- gency.
 MT. Hoover maintained that the foo6 , administrations action on sugar has
 prevented prices from doubling and ht } declared that isolated cases where dealers had sold for 15 or 20 cents were proof that costs to consumers would
 have risen far above normal had no
 agreements been made with the re.
 | liners. 10 Sissi r Replying to the testimony of Claut 5 A. Spreckels, president of the Fedora f Sugar Refining company, that ray sugar was going through New Yorl from Cuba to Canada when no suga t was to be had in New York, MT Hoov l CT said four or five thousand tons di, l go through to a Canadian manufactur |, CT who was paying higher prices. Tn X attention of the Canadian governmen l | was called to the matter, the shipment f were stopped and the manufacture
 dealt with for violating his pric I agreement.