Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1902 — THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY. [ARTICLE]

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY.

A. most important article, giving Messrs. Oxnard’s and Cutting’s views on the Beet Sugar industry in this country, appeared on the editorial page of the New York Evening Post of December 12th, 1901, and as every household in the land is interested in sugar the articje will be of universal interest. “The Evening Post bids the heartiest welcome ,to every American industry that can stand on its own bottom and make its way without leaning on the poor rates. Among these self-support-ing industries, we are glad to know, is the production of beet sugar. At all events, it was such two years ago. We publish elsewhere a letter written in 1899, and signed by Mr. Oxnard and Mr. Cutting, the chiefs of this industry on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, showing that this was the happy condition of the trade at that time. If parties masquerading as beet sugar producers are besieging the President and Congress at this moment, and pretending that they will be ruinefl if Cuban sugar is admitted for six months at half the present rates of duty, their false pretences ought to be exposed. “The letter of Messrs. Oxnard and Cutting was probably written for the purpose of inducing the farmers of the Mississippi valley to go more largely into the cultivation of beets for the sugar factories. This was a laudable motive for telling the truth and showing the large profits which awaited both the beet-grower and the manufacturer if the industry were perseveringly and intelligently prosecuted. To this end it was pointed out that farmers could clear $65 per acre by cultivating beets, and might even make SIOO. But in order to assure the cultivator that he would not be exposed to reverses by possible changes in the tariff, they proceeded to show that the industry stood in no need of protection. “The beet sugar industry, these gentlemen say, "stands on as firm a basis as any business in the country.” They point out the sact—a very Important one—that their product comes out as a finished article, refined and granulated. It is not, like cane-sugar grown in the West India Islands, a black and offensive paste, which must be carried in wagons to the seaboard and thence by ships to the United States, where, after another handling, it is put through a costly refinery, and then shipped by rail to the consumer, who may possibly be in Nebraska alongside a beet sugar factory which turns out the refined and granulated article at one fell swoop. Indeed, the advantages of the producer of beet sugar for supplying the domestic consumption are very great. We have no doubt that Messrs. Oxnard and Cutting are within bounds when they say that ‘sugar can be produced here aheaper than it can be in Europe.’ The reasons tor this are that—

“ ‘The sugar Industry is, after all, merely an agricultural one. We can undersell Europe in all other crops, and sugar is no exception.’ “It follows as naturally as the making of flour from If we can produce wheat cheaper than Europe, then ■naturally we can produce flour cheaper, as we do. "But the writers of the letter do not 'depend upon a-priori reasoning to prove that they can make sugar at a profit without tariff protection. They point to the fact that under the McKinley tariff of 1890, when sugar was free of duty, the price of the article was 4 cents per pound. Yet a net profit of $3 per ton was made by the beet-sugar factories under those conditions, not counting any bounty on the home production of sugar. They boast that they made this profit while working under absolute free trade, and they have a right to be proud of this result of their skill and industry. Many beet-sugar factories had been started in bygone years, back in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, and had failed because the projectors did not understand the business. Since then great progress has been made, both here and abroad, in the cultivation and manipulation of the beet. What was impossible thirty years ago is now entirely feasible. The industry is already on a solid and enduring basis. There are factories in the United States, these gentlemen tell us in their letter, capable of using 350,000 tons of beets per annum at a profit of $3 per ton, and this would make a profit of $1,050,000 as the Income to be earned under absolute free trade. “It must be plain to readers of this letter, signed by the captains of the beet-sugar Industry, that the people in Washington who are declaiming against the temporary measure which the President of the United States urges for the relief of the Cuban people, are either grossly ignorant of the subject, or are practising gross deception. The tenable ground for them is to say: ‘Other people are having protection that they do not need, and therefore we ought to have more than we need.’ This would be consistent with the letter of Messrs. Oxnard and Cutting, but nothing else is so.”