Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1892 — Claus Spreckels and the Sugar Trust. [ARTICLE]

Claus Spreckels and the Sugar Trust.

The New York Tribune of April 12 contains the following, “San Francisco, April 11. (Special.) One of Claus Spreckels' associates who is near to the old sugar king gave, to-day, the first inside story of the way the California millionaire made the Sugar Trust come to his terms. He said: ‘when the Sugar Trust was formed, Spreckels had full control of all the territory west of the Missouri River. The leaders of the trust offered him good terms to enter the combination, but he refused. Then they declared war on him, and threatened to carry the fight Into his own country. Spreckels is not a man who ever calmly took a challenge, and his first step was to carry the war into Africa by building a $3,000,000 refinery in Philadelphia. Then he began to cut rates, and he njade things* so lively for the trust that they were glad to make peace at any price. So they agreed to let him alone in his own territory, and to pay him $8,000,000 for his Philadelphia refinery. When the old man returned here last week, he was so elated over his profit of $5,000,000 that he divided $3,000,000 in equal shares between his sons John and Adolph and his daughter Emma. Now he Is making arrangements,to handle this season all the sugar of the Sandwich Islands, as the planters have got to come to him.’ " This same Claus Spreckels has for years been posing as the enemy of the sugar trust and the friend of the people. He has pretended to stand between the two, and to have prevented the trust from raising its prices even higher than it has done. Some credulous people have been foolish enough to believe that he was sincere in his opposition to the trust, and that he would do as he said and fight it as long as he was on top of the earth. The truth is that he has been doing some financiering on his own account, and that there has been more money for him to remain out of the trust and to work his Hawaiian monopoly, than to endanger it by selling out to the trust, at least until he could get his price, which, it seems, was no less than $8,000,000. Why he sold at? this profit Is clear when We study the situation a little. . Congressman Herbert, in the last North American Review, quotes from the report of S. G. Brock to the effect that under the reciprocity treaty of 1877 with Hawaii, which admits merchandise from Hawaii free, we have lost $43,898,978 in revenue. The two chief imports from Hawaii are sugar and rice. Mr. Herbert shows that because of the comparatively small supply of these articles from Hawaii the price of sugar and rice is not less in the United States because of this treaty. Mr. Spreckels for years had a monopoly of the sugar industry of Hawaii, hence Mr. Herbert says “every dollar of the $43,000,000 of taxes released on Hawaiian sugar went into the pockets of the producers of that article, Mr. Claus Spreckles and others." It is not surprising, then, that Mr. Spreckels comments in the North American Review of March, 1891, on “the wise and far-seeing policy embodied in the Hawaiian treaty.” Since raw sugar is free be can no longer make an extra profit of from 1 2-5 to 2 cents per pound and the sugar industry of Hawaii is seriously crippled, and since he can by this sale make $5,000,000 and maintain hid monopoly of the sugar market west of the Rockies, he has deemed it wise to sell at this sacrifice. His Eastern refinery could have earned him $1,000,000 a year as long as the present duty of half a cent per pound is maintained on refined sugar for the benefit of the trust, but perhaps Spreckels has had his ear to the ground and prefers a “bird in the hand to two in the bush.”