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The Sugar Trust

The Sugar Trust image
Parent Issue
Day
3
Month
June
Year
1892
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The Philadelphia Press, the high tariff organ of the Manufacturers' club, thus scores the sugar trust: "Congress has provided that many millions of revenue heretof ore obtained from sugar duties shall be diverted f rom the public treasury and be given to the people. The trust, under the shelter given to it by congress f or a wise and fair purpose, proposes in turn to divert a, portion of this money from the pockets of the people to the pockets of the members of the trust. "Brethren, we say to you that if the protective system is to be employed f or such purposes as this, the game is up. No champion of that system can succeed, even if he were willing to try, in commending to the people at one and the same time the protective system and the sugar trust. It is quite impossible to expect the nation to regard with enthusiasm, because it proposed to reduce the price of sugar, a law which enables the sugar trust to defeat that intention. What the purpose of the act is consumers do not so rnuch care. "The thing that appealsmost strongly to them is the actual fact that sugar prices have fallen. Now, if sugar prices shall again advance under the manipulation of a protected conspiracy against the people, it will be useless to commend consumere to the purpose of mix aicoLiniey. ney wui concluüe, and rightly conclude, that if the whole benefit of the lower duties is not to come to them, shotild go once again into the treasnry of the United States. The opponents of the protective system wil] have placed in their hands, at the most critical moment in the history of American protection, a potent weapon with ■which to assail the protective theory, and we venture to say that there is small reason to doubt that the result will be overwhelming def eat f or the protective system. "Openly, in view of every man in the nation, there will be unanswerable demonstration that the free traders do not lack justifica tion for their often repeated allegation that the proteetive tariff is used by manufacturers for the purpose of enriching themselves at the cost of their fellow citizens. The forrnation of the trust is indeed a challenge issued to the people. The latter, through their representatives in congress, have decreed that sugar shall be cheapened. The trost, on the contrary, declares that it shall not be cheapened. There can be no doubt of the conclusión of this conflict of interests if the people shall be thoroaghly roused, but there is some reason for fearing that the consequences may involve other than the offending parties. The sugar trust places the entire manufacturing interest of the country in jeopardy by its action, and in behalf of that interest we enter protest against the course that it is pursuing. "Protesting, however, is likely to be of small service in averting the peril in which protected industry has been placed by this combination. There can be no safety but in action, andit may be conjectured that there would be few expressions of grief from protectionists if a Republican senate should join with a Democratie house in sending to a Bepublican president, just as soon as the sugar trust has made its monopoly complete, a bilí placing all grades of refined sugar upon the free list. The protectionists who defend protection upon grounds of public interest have no concern to apologize for it when it is perverted to the interest of a few private individuals. In truth, such abuse of the system ought to encounter prompt resistance from the sincere friends of home industry, for the man who misuses the tariff in such a marmer is a more dangerous enemy of the system than the most active of the apostles of free trade. The question for consideration would appear to be, Shall the sugar trust be permitted to use protection for the overuhrow of protection?" Protected by the tariff on refined sugar, the sugar trust is now making profits at the rate of 73.08 per cent. on the „actual yalue of its properties. The work requireu of tue men einployeil in the sugar house is the hardest kind of work possible, and .1 considerable nuniber of the meiyire f orced to work in intense heat. The low rate of wages, L1.50 per day of ten hours, which the ;rust is willing to pay is so low that no American worknian wül work in the sngar houses - even Italiana prefer to work on the streets, piek rags and sell a-uit. The greater part of the men em)loyed are Poles and Hungarians, who have been brought over under contract. This is a trae picture of a tariff protected industry; where are the benefits to the workingman?

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News