Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1905 — HIGH COST OF SUGAR [ARTICLE]

HIGH COST OF SUGAR

How the Trust Is Enabled to Advance Prices at Will. TARIFF ’ PROTECTION DOES IT Extraordinary Provisions of the Dingier Law to Protect the Monopoly Barons—Permits an Arbitrary Increase of Over Twenty Per Cent. Concerninar Differentials. Housewives have no doubt noticed at this fruit preserving season that ■ugar. is much dearer than it was a year ago. Then it was 4*4 or 5 cents a jiaund; now It Is 6 or OMi cents. No disease has struck the sugar cane, and just as much, if not more, sugar is being produced, but the robber barons who control the sugar trust have a monopoly and so they advanced the price 20 per cent. There is a difference of about 2% cents a pound between the price of raw sugar aud the refined, and the cost of refining Is less than half a cent a pound. So it is easy to figure the enormous profit that the trust makes on the 2,579,042 tons (or au average of seventy-one pounds for every man, woman and child) that are consumed by the people of the United States. If as you are making your preserves you ponder over the reasons for this arbitrary increase in the price of sugar, just bear in mind that the tariff is what allows the trust barons to rob you. If the complicated tariff sugar schedule was simplified and reduced by even what is known as the “differential duty,” leaving the regular duty of about 1 cent a pound to be collected, the price of sugar would be considerably reduced, and if sugar was free it would sell for 2% cents a pound. But as the Republicans are running the country in debt and there is a large deficit in receipts over expenditures in the treasury it will be impossible to abolish all the tariff tax on sugar, as the money is needed to run the government The duty on sugar varies according to its degree of purity. One hundred degree sugar—that is, refined, such as the granulated sugar generally usedpays 1 95-100 cents a pound, while 75 degree sugar—that is, raw brown sugar —pays 95-100 of a cent a pound, and .035 of a cent is added for each additional degree of purity. The duty on 100 degree sugar is therefore 1.825 cents. But as 100 degree is pure sugar —that is, refined—the law says the duty on it shall be 1.95 cents, or oneeighth of a cent a pound more than the equivalent duty on sufficient raw to make one pound of refined sugar. This one-eighth of a cent is the “differential.” It is the amount per pound the refiners can collect from consumers over and above the amount of duty’ which the refiners have to pay on the raw sugar. There is also protection bidden in the graduated scale of duties on raw sugar which probably increases the “differential” to one-fourth of a cent a pound, or about $13,000,000 a year, which is the special protection the trust enjoys and which you all have to help to pay, besides the regular tariff tax. This protection prevents importation of refined sugar and allows the trust to advance the price at its own sweet will. To stop this extortion from the American people the tariff must be so adjusted that if the trust advances the price beyond a reasonable difference between raw and refined sugar foreign refiners will export their refined sugar here and compete with the trust. The Republican party is opposed to reducing the tariff taxes and especially the sugar duties, so the housewife that is pondering over the increased cost of sugar will have to advise the voters in her family to vote for- the Democratic candidates for congress or be content to still pay the tariff tax and the extra trust profit ;