OCR Text |
Show IT WAS THE TRUST. Those who affected to see in the Philippine Phil-ippine tariff bill an attack on the beet-sugar beet-sugar industry in this country, should have their eyes opened by the way the Eastern newspapers of the country are treating the question. In that press the whole matter respecting the Philippine Phil-ippine bill Is treated as a trust question, ques-tion, and the bullying tactics of the sugar trust and the tobacco trust In their attacks upon that bill are recognized recog-nized as the cause of Its death. Wo print on this page this morning a cartoon from the New York Herald which Illustrates the Idea, and carries tho suggestion that care for other matters mat-ters of more immediate homo Interest gave the opportunity for the trusts to Jump on the Philippine bill and stamp It into the earth. And that was undoubtedly un-doubtedly the case. In the pressure or other and paramount measures, the Philippine 'tariff bill had to fail. There la no pretence that the passage of that tariff bill would in the least affect the home sugar Industry, either In cane or beet. The increase of consumption con-sumption of sugar in this country far outruns the added yearly production at home; the Importations of sugar are Increasing constantly, In spite of the utmost efforts of the home producer. The price of sugar is put up, and held up, by the trust, to a figure, far beyond the quotation at which beet sugar can be profitably produced. It Is but a few years since sugar was sold In Salt Lake City at four dollars and a fraction per hundred. Tho price Is now six dollars dol-lars and upward. At that time, the farmers were paid J4.75 lo $5 per ton for the beets they raised. And they are paid even less now, when sugar Is so much higher. This shows that It was a scheme of the sugar trust, to defeat that Philippine Philip-pine bill; It was In no sense a consideration consid-eration of the industry as a whole, but only of that part of It which the sugar trust controls. The Utah company sugar stock Is controlled by tho great sugar trust of the East, whose Interest and purposo It Is to rob the beet-pro-duclng farmer on tho on hand, and the sugar-consuming public on the other. The game was perfectly plain, nnd It was absurd for anybody to raise an outcry that the local sugar industry indus-try was assailed or threatened by tho tariff concessions carried in tho Philippine Phil-ippine tariff bill. |