5th July. Ir seems well-nigh ridiculous to suggest that a handful of German farmers and chemists more than twenty years ago were responsible for the epoch-making events of 1898, for the fall of the Philippines, the capture of Cuba, the destruction of the Spanish fleets, the extinction of one world-power, the development of another, and of what else hidden in the womb of time none can say. Yet so it was. It is exactly thirty years ago that Germany inaugurated her system for the encouragement of the beet-root sugar industry, though other means of stimulation existed prior to that date. For a time the new plan worked as it was expected to work. But soon the aforesaid farmers and chemists appeared on the scene. They not only improved the sugar-bearing power of the root, but they greatly improved the method of extraction, with the result that the output was so increased that what was intended to be merely a drawback on exports became a bounty with the natural effect of stimulating production by leaps and bounds. Export in fact grew from 500,000 cent. in 1876 to over 6,000,000 cwt. in 1885.
Other Continental States finding; their sugar industries threaten with extinction began to fight the Teutons. with their own weapons, "until the policy of Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Russia seems to have been to stimulate their domestic product of sugar to the greatest extent, and then enter into competition with each other to see which of them could sell cheapest to foreigners at the expense of their own people; the home-grown sugars of France and Germany, for example, selling, it is reported, in England for about one-half the prices paid for the same article by the French and German people." The use of sugar in England did indeed advance to an unprecedented extent, so much so, that the consumption per capita was reckoned at 70lbs. as against 17lbs. in Germany itself. Particularly was this the case when the Russian output having far outgrown the needs of the home market was thrown upon the British and Italian as almost the only open markets left to it. There was loss to the British sugar refiners naturally, but this was more than covered by gains in other directions. In a de-ate in the Reichstag a deputy said "Teannot discern the smallest gain to our country. The profits of the system have only been reaped by gland. It is German sugar that has enabled England to give sugar to her cattle; it is German capital that has so developed the English manufacture of sweets, that_ it successfully competes with the German manufacturer in the markets of the world, and in Germany itself. We pay one and a-half to two millions sterling to enable England to consume what! would probably be worked up by our German industry. Gentlemen, I fear that this system has made us! the laughing-stock of our English cousins."
This is not the experience of! Germany only. The depression in Russia has at times been extreme, so! much so that restriction of production has been sought. from the law. - In France the German results have been repeated with variations. Improvement in growth and production has} Snereased the surplus which escapes duty and thus forms the bounty. This surplus has grown steadily year by year. Ten years ago it represented a money loss to the treasury and a! bounty to the manufacturer of over 90 millions of francs. Austria has not escaped similar troubles. In fact throughout continental Europe there is now but one mind on the matter. Interference with natural law by artificial stimulation is seen to be a grievous error. The question is how are the nations to get out of the tangle in which years of misdirected effort have involved them From what has been said it might have been thought that England would have been the last country to object to the kindness of her neigh-hours in giving her sugar at less than cost price. And had she been alone in her world, such probably would have been the case. But just as the German chemists and farmers brought about the Spanish-American war by ruining the Cuban sugar industry, setting up an almost general brigandage, and thus bringing about the Spanish cruelties and American intervention, so they have practically ruined, or are on the point of ruining our West India Islands, and damaging not a little the industries in India and elsewhere. This being the condition of affairs, Great Britain in 1887 extended an invitation to the Powers interested to meet in conference with a view to finding! a remedy for a very undesirable condition of affairs. The promptitude with which the invitation was accepted was significant. But as the deliberations went on, it became increasingly evident that it would be impossible to find common ground upon which to agree upon the first article, viz, "The high contracting parties engage to take such measures as shall constitute an absolute and complete guarantee that no open or disguised bounty shall be granted on the manufacture or exportation of sugar." The result was that the conference deferred final action, and up to the present time nothing has come of the various efforts to remedy what is felt by everybody to bea false position. The latest conference was that of last year, which came to nothing mainly because of the opposition of France.
It is not, indeed, an easy matter to find a cure which will not in the application cause evils almost as great as that which it aims to remedy. For with a discontinuance of the bounties much of the immense industry which has been artificially called into existence would be irretrievably ruined. The nations have created a Frankenstein's monster, and can neither live with him nor.without him. Mr. Chamberlain has proposed ascries of grants-in-aid of the distressed West Indies, but these are merely palliatives. The Commissioners who were appointed to enquire into the matter report that "the causes of the depression are manent, inasmuch as they are largely due to the policy of foreign countries, and there is no indication that that policy is likely to be abandoned in the immediate future." Unfortunately the report goes on: "There is no industry or industries that could completely replace, in such islands as Barbadoes, Antigua, and St. Kitts, the sugar industry." Nothing, therefore, is before these islands, apparently, but stark, staring ruin, unless countervailing duties are imposed in all countries on bounty-supported sugar. There has been much talk in this direction during the past twelve months, and with recent Indian legislation our readers are familiar.
But the whole story is an eloquent commentary on the short-sighted policy which prompts mankind to try to do, or to be, something different from what nature intended them. It is now being recognised that by protective duties and retaliatory tariffs the States of the world are doing themselves more injury than the most unrestricted competition could possibly inflict. Artificial stimulus is unnatural in itself, and dangerous in its effects. The overproduction of which it is the direct cause has been responsible for niner nine-hundredths of the recent pol cal complications, and, as we have shown, was a prime cause in last year's war. So it is to be feared, in Spite of peace conferences, the outlook for the future must remain obscured until the world returns to a saner system of economics.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.