Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1891 — Call ornia Gets Cheaper Sugar. [ARTICLE]

Call ornia Gets Cheaper Sugar.

For some time after the sugar tax was removed the people of California got no benefit fiom the removal, for the reason that Claus Spreekels, the great California sugar king, had made an arrangement with the sugar trust to keep up prices. More recently, however, refined sugar from Hong Kong and the Philippine Islands has been coming to the Pacific States in considerable quantities, this importation being possible under the fialf-cent duty on refined sugar; and this foreign sugar has compelled the domestic monopolists to reduce their prices. The free importation of foreign goods would be the death of American trusts and monopolies. That is why ail trusts are in favor of “protection to American industry. ” lx New South Wa’es, the free-trade colony of Australia, farm laborers get an average of $225 a year with food and lodging, or nearly twice as much as was paid thirty years ago. In the United States our protectionists have the cheek to claim that protection makes wages higher even on the farm. Wages are doubtless higher with us than they were some years ago, but if farm wages doubled in New South Wales without protection, how can the increase here be due to protection? Ix the United States there are six acres of farming land and 9.8 acres of forest land per capita of the entire population; while in Great Britain each person represents only 1.38 acres of farming land and .07 of forest (i e., seven acres of forest for each 100 persons). This difference in the density of population Is persisently ignored by protectionists, who can see no cause for higher wages with us except the tariff. Protectionists givo themselves needless alarm when we buy more abroad than we tel! there, and hence they ad-

’ vance a high tariff to keeper pqqple from being ruined by what they call an ! “unfavorable balance of trade.” But people do net need that the Government j tell them when they are doing a losing ■ business. Every separate article sold j by us in Europe is bargained for by two j intelligent merchants. Neither of these j can ship a penny's worth without the j consent of the other. Tho old saying | holds true that it takes two to make a ! bargain; and it may be added that these two can make their bargain more satisfactorily between themselves than it can be made when some other power intermeddles.