OCR Text |
Show Living Standard Promoted by Beet Sugar Industry Those economists who advocate the curtailment of our domestic sugar industry on the theory that we could buy our sugar cheaper from abroad by the removal or reduction of tariffs fail to take into account a number of important impor-tant factors in the situation. For one thing, ithey fail to reconcile re-concile their economic philosophy with the factors that sustain our high standard of living. Low-priced labor may be had for as cheap as five cents an hour in Cuba and Porto Rico cane-sugar-growing areas, but the laborer there does not need to expend his money on the many commodities manufactured and sold in America. He works cheaply cheap-ly and lives so. His requirements are simpler because his standard of living is wretchedly low. The picture in America is quite different. Here the laborer in beet sugar factories gets a minimum of fifty cents per hour (for his work. Thus it naturally costs more to produce sugar from beets with this labor, but the American worker work-er attains a far higher standard of living from his increased wage. In turn, he becomes a better customer cus-tomer for the goods of other producers. pro-ducers. He buys more goods from manufacturers all over the country. coun-try. He, therefore, helps to maintain main-tain the wealth and prosperity of the nation in countless lines. He buys automobiles from Detroit, radois from New York and styles from Hollywood. The prosperity which he helps to maintain multiplies mul-tiplies and makes for the common good of millions of Americans. Our nation has been founded on such commercial exchange. This is hardly to be computed as something some-thing detrimental to the sugar-consumer. sugar-consumer. According to experts, beet sugar production offers untold benefits to farm land, farmer and the public. Sugar is also a vital part of the modern diet and as such, . (tenend&ble suDnlv must be per- manently assured in peacetime or in war. America is the largest, sugar su-gar consumer of the major countries coun-tries of the world. If we were cut off ifrom foreign supply of sugar, we woud find it a serious handicap handi-cap in our daily life. By fostering the sugar beet industry, in-dustry, we act towards preserving our own independence and wealth. Not only 100,000 farmers annually annual-ly are benefited from ithe growing of sugar beets, but many more in allied industries necessary to process pro-cess sugar are likewise enriched. One million acres of land are kept profitably cultivated as a result. According to expert economists, the cultivating of sugar beets offers of-fers more labor per" acre than other major farm crops and produces pro-duces a larger cash yield in return. re-turn. They state that ,in comparison compari-son with other consumfcr products the price of sugar at present offers of-fers us a product vitally needed at lowest possible cost. |