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Show The Free Sugar Fallacy. Concerning the placing of sugar on the free list so as to be a benefit to the consumer a New Orleans paper scoffs at the idea and goes on to explain its reasons in the following language: lan-guage: "The claim that placing sugar on the free list will cheapen the cost of that important article of general consumption is so transparently wrong that it is surprising that Mr. Wilson and his advisers ad-visers have been so easily deceived. Past experiences ex-periences warrant the belief that the moment that this country removes the tariff on sugar the foreign for-eign producing countries will place an export tax on their shipments. There is no more available subject of taxation in the great sugar growing countries than sugar itself, and an export tax could be easily and, equitably collected. The experience ex-perience with coffee, which now enters free of all duty, should be asuiTicient warning to the free-Hugar advocates. The consumer in the United States now pays more lor the coffee he uses than he paid when the delicious bean paid a duty on entering the country. Free coffee, therefore, there-fore, increased the cost of the article to consumers, and the experience with free sugar will be identical identi-cal should Congress ever be foolish enough to pass a free-sugar act ' "The plea that free sugar is desired by the people as a means of punishing the Sugar Trust is sublimely ridiculous. The refiners would profit largely by being able to import the raw sugar they handle free duty, as they being the only importers im-porters would be able to exact a much larger margin of profit on the refined article, than they now do. Morover, the destruction of the beet-sugar beet-sugar industry by free sugar would eliminate the present competition of the 600,000 tons of beet product, pro-duct, which goes on the market in a refined state, with the product of the trust refineries." |