Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1912 — ORCHARD COMES INTO FIGHT [ARTICLE]

ORCHARD COMES INTO FIGHT

Matter of Excessive Protection on Sugar Is Something Appealing to Every Housewife. The reduction of the sugar tariff will meet with strong opposition from the beet sugar states. But that opposition can be lessened greatly if the champions of cheaper living will take the trouble to point out a fact hitherto overlooked. By a queer coincidence, the states which figure most prominently in the production of beet sugar—California, Colorado, Michigan, etc. —are likewise the states with a large and growing fruit industry. The tariff, which is a subsidy for the beet grower, is a direct tax on the fruit grower. It directly discourages the canning and preserving of fruits. Not all the fruit of any district ran be sold fresh. The market and crop both vary from year to year. The invariable tendency is to produce a surplus, and then, if possible, can or preserve that surplus for sale later. No housewife need be told that a large amount of sugar is needed in preserving and even in canning fruits. Whatever raises the price of sugar raises the cost of fruit preserving and canning; thereby raising the cost to the consumer, and at the same time narrowing the market. The sugar tariff adds not less than $1.50 per hundred to the cost of sugar. Probably it adds the full amount of the tariff, about $1.90; for cane sugar is used almost exclusively in the fruit Industry. The weight which this lays on»the fruit canning industry may be Imagined. If the "sugar states” are made to understand that subsidizing the sugar beet means taxing the orchard, they will not be so strenuous in defense of the sugar trust. —Chicago Journal.