Sugar Trust Profits

Ex-Congressman John Ds Witt Warner is one of the best posied men in this country on sugar tarlffs. When n congress he carried the house for 'ree sugar. Tn a recently publisheil tatement he estimates the net proeciion to the trust given by the 1frScS schedule at frora 30 c.?nts to 1.14 on every 100 pounds of refined ugar. Without attempting to give his i gument as to each of the ways in vhieh the trust would be protectcd we give his summary of trust profits ;is ollows: Specific differential $0.13@$0.40-hirty-five per cent ad valorem differential . . . 0.14@ 0.21 Ccuntervailing duty, say. 0.08O 0.35 dditional by substitution of 75 per cent ad valorem for specific duties in low grades 0.00@ 0.18 Tota! $0.35@ 1.14 In the vast majority of cases, however. the actual result is between 45 and 60 cents per 100 pounds net protection to the trust, and it is impracticable so to combine circumstances as to bring this below 40 cents or above 60 cents for any considerable amount. As an item of tariff taxation the schedule is ideal from the protectionist standpoint. Sugar is the one article used by poor and rich to an equal extent, and a tax on which therefore falls most heavily on the poor in proportion to their ability to pay it. lts production and distribution are controlled by a concern whieh is at once the greatest of our mean trusts and the meanest of our great ones. It is consistent therefore that on this one amele there should be levien more than one-third of our total tarïft taxation, and that ouipeople shouirt be burdened by a tax of more than $90,000,000 that realizes less than $70,000,000 for the treasury and more than $20,000,000 for the sugar refining combine, while tthe same combine is enabled to net án additional $10,000,000 j by the opportunity given it to import j at present duty rates raw sngars from i which it can make refined to be sold by it under the enhanced price assured i : by the proposed Aldrich schedule. The net "protection" of from 45 lo 60 cents per 100 pounds given the trust on its refining process alone shonld be considered as sufficient when we remsmber that the labor cost of this process is slightly less than 6% cents per 100 pounds - that is to say. Senator Aldrich, in behalf of American labor, proposes unduly to tax wage earners in order to give the trust from iïve to seven times as much "protection" as it paya for all the labor involved. Xext to the wage-earner the farmer is dear to the protectionist heart, and he is therefore equally favored by the sugar schedule. Of late years througiiout the eastern and middle and many of the central states the competition of Mie far west has driven our farmers from grain raising into fruit culture. This has now so developed that except for exports of canned goods, jams, preserves, etc. - in which we suren ought to supply the world. the business of fruit raising hae, in lts turn. breóme almost profitless. And poverty is naw assured to those who are dependent upon fruit culture rjy the proponed tax of two cents a pound on sugar. This increases by from 50 to 7: per cent the artieles which would raake up from 40 to 75 per cent of the total weight of the jams, etc, the exp rt of which might insure living prices for the surplus fruits, but which is now practically prohibitcd. And thls is "a government of the people, by the people and for the peoWho are "the people?"