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Show THE KEITHIJCAX IJAIT. The placing of sugar upon the free list, which the McKixley bill did, was done with one object, and that was for i the purjiose of reconciling the voters of j the country to the enormous increases ! upon other necessaries of life, by the promise that the bill would give them cheap sugar. It was a scheme characteristic charac-teristic of the Republican partv, so that tbey could go into the campaign, and appeal to the sympathies of the laboring labor-ing classes, and ask them. "Who gave j ou cheaper sugar?" But, in lieu of this tax upon sugar, the bill, by ite provisions, will pay out 1 of the public Treasury a bounty of one I and three-quarter cents a pound upon ! all sugar polarizing between eighty and ninety degrees, which will amount, according ac-cording to the present production of sugar in this country, to between seven and eight million dollars per annum. This is the first time in our history I when it has ever been proposed to pay j out of the public Treasury a bounty to I the domestic producer of any article not exploi ted, and never heretofore lias it been proposed to pay out of the public pub-lic treasury a bounty upon any article actually exported unless it was manufactured manu-factured i:i who. or in part from foreign for-eign duty paid materials. The first tariff act passed by Cougri ss imposed a duty upon salt and provided that there should be allowed, in lieu of a drawback draw-back upon salt and pickled lish and salted provisions thereafter exported the sum of five cents on each quintal of j lish and the cents on each uaiuloj provisions, and we have now, upon the : statute bo !;. laws under which draw-i draw-i backs arc paid upon the exportation of articles manufactured in whole or in part from impoited materials. In lieu ! of these payments allowed by the act j 'of 17-39, the act of lT'.M provided that j ! there should be a bounty paid upon I vessels engaged in the fisheries of l.oO j per ton on a vessel exceeding Iwcjity I ; and not exceeding thirty tons, and Si'-oo-j ion vessels exceeding thirty tons. : Uut ti.is bounty was not paid for the j I purpose of encouraging the production j or the catching of lish, because it was not made to depend to any extent whatever upon the number or quantity of lish caught. The sole policy of the act was to encourage American citizens to learn the art of seamanship, which in those days of sailing-Vessels was a matter of the very gravest importance toa young nation straggling to establish estab-lish an efficient navy, but the mere j catching of lish was a matter of little ! importance and did not. in the estima-; estima-; lion of anybody, rise to the dignity of a public necessity. This bounty was j to be justified, if justifiable at all, upon the same principle which underlies our j legislation establishing naval and mili- tary academies for the educaiioii of officers for the army and the navy and j maintaining them at the public ex-j ex-j peuse a purely public object aud not a private one. i Moreover, under that bounty act the ' money was divided between the owners ! of the vessels and the laborers upon them, the laborers receiving live-I live-I eighths of the money and the owners of ! the vessels three-eighths. Under the I McKixlky bill the laborer is entirely ignored in the distribution of the ! bounty, and all the money is to be paid i the capitalist, the manufacturer of sugar, the man who is able to own and operate U'e expensive machinery necessarily neces-sarily used in that business. Nor is any part of this lwunty to be paid to the crower of beets or sorghum or sugar-cane, but every dollar of it will go to the manufacturer who makes sugar from those materials. But it may be argued that the producer pro-ducer of beets and sorghum and cane who is not sole to own the necessary jichinery to convert them into sugar t receive 1 pricpa for his pro- fiit place, the farmer can not control and never has been able to control the prices of his products; and, in the second place, the manufacturer of beet sugar and that is the article for which this encouragement was mainly intended will be compelled to sell his sugar in the open markets of the country in competition with the sugar su-gar made from cane and sorghum, and he will not pay to the farmer who sells his beets one cent more for his material than i s value, as material, compared with the value of the material from which other sugar is made. Neither w ill the consumer receive any benefit from his bounty. He will not get his sugar one cent cheaper than he would ! if no bounty were paid, because the ; bounty-paid sugar produced in this i country will sell in the markets at the same price precisely as the duty paid refined sugar which comes here from other countries, but the consumers will be taxed seven or eight million dollars per annum to be paid as a gratuity to j the manufacturers, and to this extent j their sugar will cost them more than it j would have cost, without the bounty. |