Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/769

Rh Viewed from the standpoint of equity and expediency, the proposition to assess all the varieties of imported sugars at one and the same rate of duty is something extraordinary. The United States, for the attainment of its fullest material development as a nation, must have foreign commerce. It desires to attract all nations to its markets; and, except when it is itself made the subject of discrimination, it must, for the attainment of this end, admit to equal privileges the people of all nations desiring commercial intercourse. Were the proposition soberly made to discriminate specially and by name, in our commercial laws, against any one, two, or more unoffending nations, the proponent would be speedily hooted into silence. But the proposition to assess raw sugars at one rate embodies this very thing. Thus, to illustrate, the sugars produced in countries of low civilization, like Brazil, Central America, the East Indies, and the like, constitute the hulk of the sugar product of the world, and are low in grade and price, and necessarily so because these countries lack intelligence and capital. Such sugars are, however, capable of purification without difficulty, and afford the largest basis in so doing for the profitable employment of domestic labor and capital. The producers, furthermore, must sell them in our markets if they in return are to buy any of the products of our skill and machinery, for they have little or nothing else to buy with. Such raw sugars naturally command the lowest prices in the world's markets. On the other hand, the raw sugars produced in Cuba and Demerara are much further advanced in manufacture, and are largely known as "centrifugals," from having been subjected to a purely mechanical (rotary) process of refining. Such raw sugars command the highest prices, and are worth on the average at least fifty per cent more than the sugar products of countries of a low civilization. A uniform duty on all raw sugars of one cent per pound would, therefore, be equivalent to an ad-valorem tax, or tax on market value, of about fifty per cent on the cheaper grades, and about twenty-five per cent on the highest grades; or, in other words, if the Government, under a uniform rate of one cent, were to collect its (customs) taxes in kind on sugar, it would take one half the importations of low-grade sugars, while only one fourth of the importation of high grades would be taken for the same purpose. All the machinery of the Government is now adapted to the ad valorem system of taxing sugars, and in the opinion of the Treasury officials it can be and is honestly administered.

It is difficult to see why, with an impending deficiency of national revenue, sugar grown in the Hawaiian Islands, and the \importation of which into the United States in 1895 exceeded 280,000,000 pounds, should be admitted free of duty. Is it not