The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1938-11-09
RESTRICTED SUGAR
RESTRICTED WEALTH

We no more need a long array of
statistics to aid us in arriving at an opinion
on the policy of restricting our suger-pro-
ducing area, than we would need to sit
down and consider carefully as to whether
we would be richer or poorer if we should
destroy half our clothing, shoot half of our
livestock or in any other way destroy our
possessions.
Surely, we have not yet forgotten
what we paid in money and what i'm
measureably more we paid in mal-nutrition
when war held UP commerce and sugar
retted on the wharves of Cuba.
If only for the sake of "self-con-
tanned America we should build up a
source of supply Of sugar that would for
ever put an end to the necessity of i'm
porting it from across the water.
And, this service to the nation, it is in
the power of Florida to perform. More
than that, in this day of mounting I'M
employment, capital stands ready to put
literally thousands of men to work in the
healthiest of occupations, in the finest en-
vironment in which an American citizen
who would rear his family away from the
congested cities, could hope to find.
But THE mandate has gone out Iofler-
ing the destruction of opportunity. for
labor, the destruction of millions of dollars
every year in domestic commerce and, re-
tail trade in Florida, and the diversion of
seventy-five per cent of the money that the
housekeepers of the United States will
spend to put sugar on their tables, to sup
port the industry that is making an under
fed peonage of the natives of Puerto Rico
and the abolition of the subsistence farmer
of Hawaii.
With the experiments, born of des-
peration, of Manutuska, the Tennessee
Valley Authority, Of settling farmers on
farms fenced with red tape and in homes
covered with debts that will never be paid,
the sugar industry of the Florida Ever
glades asks for no subsidy from the gov
eminent, no costly bureaucracy to adj
minister it, no violent interference with
the laws of supply and demand.
All that the Florida Everglades sugar
farmers ask is permission to plant their
fields and reap the harvests thereof, to put
the heads of fifty thousand families to
work, to put millions of dollars worth of
trade into the stores and the shops of Flor
ida, and above ALL to place within the con-
fines of our own cost line supply of sugar
that will never be affected by blockade,
nor restricted by alien treaty.
They are asking for no protection
against cheap labor, no subsidy to help
overcome competition The bounty of
nature. the combination of soil and climate
that exists within the Everglades is such
Florida's sugar producers can pay double
the wages paid in Louisiana, far more than
is paid in Hawaii, and many times the
wages paid in Puerto Rico, and yet, pro-
duce sugar at lower cost than can any
of these regions.
Yet, at the expense of the breakfast
table Of America, to- Say nothing Of the
great industries that use sugar by! the tosu
Florida is commander to throw seventy
five per eeftrpf her value eagN sugar pro-
ducer away l1d4Aestfey her usefulness to
the nation in time of peace and to leopard
ize the health of the nation in time of war.
Let us be through with this nom
sense. Unite Florida's hands that she may
serve her country.