Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — TOOLS OF THE TRUST. [ARTICLE]

TOOLS OF THE TRUST.

GROCERS’ ASSOCIATIONS CONTROLLED BY HAVEMEYERS. Some of the Secret History of How the Prices of Both Raw and Refined Sugars Are Dictated—How Republicans Squirm. A Timely Exposure. There Is one phase of the sugar trust with which the public is but little familiar. Most people know something of the trust's ability to dictate prices of both raw and refined sugars; to close refineries and throw men out of work; to manipulate its stocks in Wall street by means of false rumors as to prospective dividends or profits to defy laws and courts by refusing to give statistics to the Census Department, or to allow Senate committees to examine its books; and to bribe enough Senators to procure favorable legislation. But few people, however, know that during the last four years the trust has built up the nearly forty wholesale grocers’ associations which now cover all parts of this country, and has so planned them that their most important function is to serve the base interests of the trust. Yet such is the case.

By an ingeniously devised system of rebates to the grocers, who are members of wholesale associations, and who sell only the trust's sugars (or sugars of refiners allied with the trust, as practically all now are), at prices fixed daily by the trust, the grocers’ associations become the Instruments of the trust in sustaining prices so that no person in this country can obtain sugar except at trust prices. More than that; the profits from the rebates have been large enough to make allies and defenders of these natural enemies of the trust. Several times, when called upon, these grocers have sent in hundreds of telegrams to Congressmen from all parts of the country begging or threatening them not to favor legislation which would destroy some or all of the unholy profits of the sugar trust. Congressman John De Witt Warner, who secured the passage of the freesugar bill through the House, and who is, perhaps, the best posted on sugar trust matters of any man not connected with sugar business, has written a very interesting pamphlet, printed by the Reform Club of New York, entitled “The Distributing Combine.” He has made a great collection of original documents, correspondence, etc., upon the subject, and gives the most accurate details of the heretofore secret history of this gigantic trust and its powerful allies in every State. At the end of his twenty-four-page pamphlet Mr. Warner thus summarizes the startling details of this wonderful trust: “With the Spreckels in control of Hawaii, and the Havemeyers extending their plantations in Cuba, the trust dictates to every branch of sugar production and distribution in the United States, taking under its wing every one concerned—except those who consume sugar. From its office, at 117 Wall street, cable messages fly daily to its agents in Cuba, fixing the price of raw sugars there; to San Francisco announcing ‘Cuban parity,’ at which arriving Hawaiian sugars are to be valued; to Louisiana, telling her planters what—in view of Cuban and Hawaiian prices—the trust condescends to offer for American sugar; and to its representatives all over the world, giving the limit—based on Cuban parity—at which they can pick up Austrian, Javan, Philippine, Brazilian and other sugars, when these are temporarily depressed in price. In an adjoining room the quotations at or above which the subservient dealers throughout the country are permitted to sell sugars, are daily settled, and through the four great sugar brokers who stand nearest the throne these are passed to the forty others who awaits the sugar trust’s nod at New York and telegraphed to the waiting hundreds in other cities of the land. These in turn so promptly notify their patrons, the thousands of wholesale grocers of the country, that before their doors are opened all danger of any purchaser getting his sugar below trust prices is over for the day. By discount from his bill or periodical remittance, as the case may be, each faithful wholesaler is promptly and liberally paid for his loyalty; and whenever, in the crisis of legislation, he hears the bugle call of the trust, he instantly steps into line, ready to bombard his Congressman with telegrams or fight him with ballots at short range until the sugar trust cause is triumphant. / “Such is the grandest trade organization the world has ever seen. “The sugar trust dictates the tribute that shall be rendered it by the American people. “The wholesale grocers are rewarded by whatever of largess the trust thinks necessary to insure their loyalty. “And the public?—‘The public be damned’—and it is.” Iron and Steel Need No Protection. In a letter to the Herald on the tariff Mr. Seneca D. Kimbark, of Chicago, a veteran in the iron and steel business, writes: “The iron and steel trade of this country does not need protection now. The time was when it did need it, but that time is passed. Neither does the tinplate industry need protection. All it needs is for vigorous, young, patriotic Americans to go into it. They will build up and remove it from any danger of Welsh or other foreign competition. “Any industry that demands forty or fifty per cent, protection ought to die.” Mr. Kimbark very forcibly adds: “I have been in the iron and steel business for forty years, and I say that this branch of business does not need protection. Tariff duties are but the extraction of selfish greed at the best” No testimony could be more pertinent or show more clearly the blindness and stupidity of the present do-nothing policy of the Democratic Senators who refuse to consider the bills for placing iron ore and bituminous coal on the fi’ee list The passage of these bills would help American iron and steel industries generally—by enabling them to cheapen production and thus to en-

large the sale of their products both at home and in the world’s markets. If the question could be considered without political bias and apart from all political partisanship, American manufacturers would probably be almost unanimous in demanding freedom from taxation for these and other raw materials.—New York Herald. Babcock's Heretical Ideas. Mr. Babcock, the chairman of the Republican Congressional committee, has been openly repudiating the McKinley bill and saying “it was not deffired by one Republican out of five, and was au unreasonable imposition of the manufacturers, and that the country will not in any case go back to IL” For this he was sternly chastised by the party organ, the Tribune, this morning, In an interesting though amusing, article Babcock was wrong In attacking the McKinley tariff, because “that was the latest form of tariff framed and formally approved by the Republican party as a w hole.” But then this might have been said of the twenty-four Republican tariffs which have preceded it since 18G1.. Each was in its day “the latest form of tariff,” etc., but every one of them must have been attacked by some sacrilegious Republican dog like Babcock, or else it would never have had to give place to another. The Tribune next admits that the tariff of 1890 “is not a fetich to be stupidly worshipped,” which is in substance what Babcock says. “The defects of the measure may be profitably explained and corrected when the opportunity comes.” w’hich is also Babcock’s view. “Whenever power comes from the people to frame a new revenue law’, the Republicans will Improve on the act of 1890 as far as they can.” We do not know Babcock, but if he would deny this, he would be far worse than his friends represent him to be. The mission of the Republican party is to “improve our tariffs” by making new ones. The explanation the Tribune gives the wretched man of the meaning of the election in 1894 will not, we fear, help him to clearer views of the situation: “It is just as well to quit the notion that the American people meant in 1894 exactly what they meant in 1892. The change operated mightily, and he is a dolt who does not see it Whatever the verdict of 1892 meant, we may be entirely sure that the verdict of 1894 means not only something different but on the whole something directly opposite.” Now this is not a case of excluded middle. It does not under the present laws of thought follow that because the verdict of 1892 meant something uncertain or unknown, the verdict of 1894 means something directly opposite. If one declines to go South, It does not show itat be wants to go north. He may want to go northwest or southwest or eist by north-northeast. This, we are sure, is Babcock’s view, and we advise him to siand his ground. We are pained to observe, however, that Mr. Babcock, before the Tribune got at him, had already begun to recant. He now says he did not mean to crltise the bill “as a whole,” but on y some details, and declares that “the Intelligence of an American people was the foundation of our strength as a nation,” a remark which evidently puts somebody “In a hole,” but whom does not appear. Mr. Reed also recants a little, as does Mr. Apsley, of Massachusetts.—New York Post. * Squirming Republicans. That the education on the tariff question that has been going on for six years has extended to the Republican party is evident from the discussion among their leaders as to whether or not their party is still for high protective or of moderately low duties. The following sent out from Washington a few days ago to the New York Times is indicative of the growing tendency of Republicans to fight among themselves about protection: Nothing could be more distressing to zealous Bourbon Republicans than the agitation which is progressing all over the country in favor of a Republicanism that discredits McKinleyism. Reed, Allison, Sherman, Butterworth and other Republicans have helped the low-tariff tendency on, and they appear to have helped.it too much. Chairman Babcock has been endeavoring to eat up a statement attributed to him and supporting the moderate tariff idea, and remonstrances against the heresy are heard all over the Capitol. Capt. Boutelle, who is always oratorical and superlative in language, has set his face against the tendency to-day, and in words that can have but one meaning he says, in tones that can be heard for blocks: “Instead of retreating, the great army of protection has advanced its standards and lifted them higher than ever before. The demand for the preservation of the American market for the products of our industry, and for such protection as will guarantee to American workmen the greatest practicable diversification of employments and the highest possible wages consistent with the general welfare of the whole people, has been uttered at the polls this year in stentorian tones, and nny man or set of men in any party who disregards or seeks to misinterpret that mandate will fail to muster a corporal’s guard of supporters among the intelligent and patriotic citizens who form the future hope and safeguard of the republic.”

$40,000,000 Wall Street Profits. The analysis of sugar ring manipulation during the last year is startling in its suggest!veness, particularly to those who remember what happened in the case of Cordage. The figures show’ that the ring operators have been selling and buying the W'hole of their stock three times over every month, and as they have had the making of all the news concerning it, have been able to put prices up and down at will. The margins of possible profit on their purchases and Sales for a year have amounted to more than $150,000,000. Allowing three-fourths of this for “wash sales” and the like, there is still a gambling profit in sight'of forty-odd millions, and as a year’s dividends amount only to one-tenth that sum they can oe paid or passed as the gamblers see fit, without serious inconvenience either way. It is like gambling with marked cards or loaded dice, and the profits must in the end come cut of the earnings of honest men. How much of da,ngei’ all this involves to the prosperity of the country the history of the cordage collapse only partially suggests.—New York World. Cape Henry’s Light. The highest lighthouse on the American coast is that at Cape Henry, Va. It is 1 o feet in height, built wholly of iron.