Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-10-16
SUGAR IS A FAIR GAUGE
OF THE WORLDS PROSPERITY
Rationins Would Not Be Necessary II
the Public Did Not Have Money
Enough TO Buy More Than
There Is

the Public Did Not Have Money
Enough to Buy More Than
There Is
THE consumption of sugar is a measure
L of prosperity. Little of it is used in
the industrially backward countries, for
the people have not money enough to pay
for it.
Consequently, the necessity of restor-
ing sugar rations indicates that the peo-
pie of this country are so prosperous that
they have money enough to buy more
sugar than is available for them. A plan
has been devised to apportion the visible
supply in such way that every family
can get enough for its reasonable needs.
Each family may not get what it wishes,
but it will get enough to sweeten its tea
and coffee, with some for use in cakes
and pies and preserves.
One of the reasons for regulating the
consumption of sugar lies in the falling
off in production on account of the war.
The difference between last years total
sugar crop and the crop of 1914 is about
five billion pounds, or more than all the
sugar produced in the whole world in
1865. But the chief reason is that we
have cultivated a taste for sugar and
have the money to pay for it.
There is likely to be a scarcity until
normal production is resumed through
the cultivation of the sugar beet in Ger
many and Russia We have come to re-
nd hlt q ms a r.
ter of fact, it is luxury available, as in
dicated in the first paragraph of this
article, only to those who have money to
buy it.
The natives of India have to get along
with very little of it because they are
poor. In the year before the war, when
consumption was normal, the Italians
were rich enough to buy only 10.45
pounds per capita, while the English con-
sumed $3.50 pounds. The Spaniards
used 1881 pounds per capita and the
citizens of the United States 1888
pounds. In Germany 1895 pounds were
consumed and in Turkey only 20.33
pounds. And in Denmark it took 93.4S
pounds per capita to supply the demand.
The total world production in that year
was just little short Of forty-two bill
lion pounds, or about 25 pounds per
capita for the total world population
of one billion seven hundred million
human beings.
The available supply this year is about
five billion pounds less than in 1914, and
this deficit is five hundred million pounds
ata,. thor Tho total 1,,prlJ y,rp11rfioy,
in 1865. BY 1883 that production had
doubled. 1t had doubled again when 1900
was reached and it had doubled once
more in 1910.
The period between 1900 and 1910 was
one of the most prosperous of which
there is any record. Wealth was increas-
ing rapidly in all civilized countries.
The wages of workingmen were being
raised. Work was available during the
period as whole for all who were will
ing to do it. Money was plentiful. and
when men had money they bought sugar
for sweetening their food. They spent
their earnings for articles in the manu-
facturc of which la"ge quantities of
sugar were used and they demanded so
much sugar that the cane and beet grow
ers extended their acreage and did their.
best to supply what the world wanted
We have become so accustomed to
sugar that we regard it as a necessity
without which it wouldSbe hardship to
live. 1t is exactly as necessary as the
trolley car and the telephone and the
electric light.
Our ancestors, however, got along
without all these things. Sugar, as
matter of fact, was once used chiefly as
a medicine and its price was compara-
lively as high as that of quinine during
our Civil War. In the fourteenth CEN
tury sugar sold in Scotland for one
shilling and nine pence a pound, which
was at least two days wages for the
average workingman. The equivalent of
this today would be about $40, but we
are paying only eleven cents a pound.
1t was not until the introduction of
tea and coffee into Europe that sugar
began to be used commonly. Since that
time its consumption has spread rapidly
assisted by the increasing prosperity of
the working people.
Sugar was made at first exclusively of
the Juices of sugar cane, which origi-
mated in India, was introduced from there
into China, on the east, and into Persia,
on the west. From Persia the Spanish
and Portuguese discoverers carried it to
the Madeira Islands and thence to San
Domingo. When once introduced into
the West Indies it spread through all the
islands and to both American continents.
And now Cuba produces more cane
sugar than any other country, and her
yield is approached only by that of Java.
Beet sugar as an article of commerce
dates only from the beginning of the
last century. That there was sugar in