The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1922-08-24
THE NATIONAL CAPITAL

BY ]. E. Jones.
1t has been many years since the
local grocer posted signs in his win
dow announcing go pounds of sugar
for a dollar" One pauses to wonder
in view of the tariff debate whether
sugar is any longer a commodity or
merely a gamble.
The statement went unchallenged
in the Senate debate that five Of the
sugar refiners of the United States
control companies in CUBA which pro
duce the greater bulk of all the sugar
produced in that island. And usually
ii is not hard to get five concerns
whose interests are identical to agree.
Within the past year Cuban raws
have sold for $1.67 a hundred pounds;
but when sugar was a IVA baby"
and during that period we'll remem-
bered by everybody and described by
Senator SmoOt as a "debauch OF
speculation and manipulation" raw
sugars advanced to % cents a pound,
and in the East, where Cuban sugar
supplies the market, g%ranulated sugar
sold as high as 35 cents a pound. Sc
nator Smoot says that it has beer es-
timated by reliable authority that the
American consumer paid $500, 000, 900
for this experience.
Even at sky-high prices the specu-
lators in Cuban sugar held their sup
plies for the market to go higher, but
in tho cnrino nf 1901 fnrfU-fnlIr DIFF
ferent nations sought the American
market, and found it profitable to pay
even a higher tariff duty than the
1.67 preferential Cuban rate, and
these new shippers of sugar to oul
shores dumped 100000 tons of sugar
into American markets. The big
five" American sugar refiners were
whipped, and there was nothing left
for them to do but hold the Cuban
crops for better times. Cuba's house
of cards tumbled down upon it's fool
ish little head. Last January Cuban
raws sold in New York as low as
$1.67 per hundred pounds.
In the speculation and manipula-
ton of Cuban sugar it is interesting
to know that the American consumer
usually stands the pinch. The sugar
beet and can producers in the
United States are likewise the vic
tins of the processes manipulated by
the big five" and their market and
their prices are usually subject to
the Cuban sugar manipulations. The
third member of the triangle is
Cuba. Little Cuba still has the luxu-
ries of unrestricted horse racing and
licensed booze and poses as an Ar
cady for sports; but financially u
little sister" is in fact the football
of American sugar spectators.
In the tariff debate the American
sugar producers have been fighting
for protection against Cuban sugar.
The Senate has placed a duty Of 2
and one-third cents a pound on sug-
ar, and a 20 per cent d~ifferential in
favor of Cuba, which will actually
make the Cuban rate 1.S4 cents a
pound. Vaguely the sugar beet and
cane growers believe that they carry
on their industry with this degree of
protection" In the Senate argu-
ments it has been usually asserted
that this is protection" against the
Cuban crop. Getting down to the
brass tacks of the debate n realizes
that the protection" asked for is
really against the American sugar
refining trust, manipulated in Wall
Street.
1t all resolves itself into another
instance wherein the tariff makers
are still holding tenaciously to their
historic theory of making a schedule
to regulate competition" whereas the
niger in the woodpile is the sugar
refiners combination" OF course
the Senators know all this, and their
hope is that they can help reach the
evil by tariff duty against Cuban sug-
ar. The Hardwick sugar investiga-
ton, price-fixing and other nostrums
failed to work. Maybe the tarin Is
still the remedial cathartic.