The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-04-25
SUGAR STILL GOES UP

SUGAR STILL GOES UP
 The problem of high-priced sugar is not confined to the United States While the wholesale prices of refined in this country are around $9.60 the hundred pounds, in Canada the re- liners are asking SIPS. In Eng land the price is high, but high of ficialdom says that it is because of a prospective shortage that this is so. In France they are inclined to jest at the situation which puts sugar out of the reach of many. The friends of high tariff may find it difficult to understand why France does not la ment the injury free trade in Cuban cane sugar may have on her domestic beet product. In spite of the fact that beet sugar has no such tariff protection as our tariff commission says is essential to the protection of our own beet sugar industry, France finds that her sugar producers are prospering and murmuring not. Of course, the tariff advocates may re- tort that lack of a tariff is not re- ducing sugar prices in other coun- tries. True enough, but not only are prices at present naturally higher in other countries than here, because of exchange difficulties, but also it should not be forgotten that American refiners and dealers control both the supply and the market of cane sugar. There is food for reflection in that. Naturally, they are not selling the product elsewhere for less than they can sell it at home.
 which beet sugar had cashed in on the consumer and drawn down it's enormous dividends the spectators were plainly on the side of the angels. It will be noticed that MT. Daugherty did not intervene until the beet-sugar interests had got everything that was coming to them out of their partner ship with Republican politics" How ever that may be, the public will not sasily be induced to believe that any shortage, present or prospective, has had anything to do with the boost in price.
 One unacceptable and unforgivable fact about the whole sugar manipula- tion is that, in spite of the alleged shortage, the refiners have pyramided
 Some journals are unkind enough to hint that the Daugherty injunction is a political move and is by way of locking the gate after the colt is stolen, the colt in this case being the beet sugar production of which Reed Shoot is said to be the official pro- tector in Washington. Now that the Mormon and other sugar producers have disposed of their crop under shelter of the high prices the depart ment of justice, it is said, proceeds to enjoin further price-hoisting by such foreigners as deal in Cuban su- gar. For example, the New York World remarks: 'The sugar. specu- lators may be as wicked as MT. Daugherty now says they are, but they were certainly good friends to beet sugar, as the financial returns show, and it was for the profit of beet sugar that all this tariff manipu- lation went on. Up to the point at their profits to figure far in excess of what they would have made with an admitted normal supply. The principle that the ratio between sup ply and demand influences the price is accepted, but there is nothing in the economic principle to warrant quadrupled profits when the shortage at the worst is not more than ten or twelve per cent. It is shown by sev- erh journals and by the figures that, as the Philadelphia Public Ledger puts it, 'the total loot of the sugar raiders had mounted to $350, 1000, ,000," since last November. And the gov ernment official table shows that the percentage of actual deliveries of su- gar "sold" by traders amounted to an average of not more than .OO1 per cent. That is, about one pound in every ten thousand pounds sold was
 
 delivered.
 Verify, the situation needs looking into. Although Philadelphia is a great refining center, the Public Ledger does not hesitate to say: "This coun- try would greet with whoop of ap- proval criminal proceedings against the gamblers. The outcome of the whole business, however, must turn on whether there is or is not world sugar shortage. Secretary Hoover says there Is not. A great sugar coterie says there is." That being the case, what is to prevent the discovery of the truth7 Surely our government, with all it's ramifying departments, can discover and establish this one l fact.