Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/54

46 complaint on the part of producers that the amount received by them does not cover the cost of production. Under such a condition of affairs, the German Parliament (Reichstag), in May, 1896, accepting a popular declaration that "sugar was the last and only agricultural product in which there remained any profit for the German farmer, and that whatever skillful legislation could do to preserve and protect that industry should in justice to the suffering landowners be given a prompt and thorough trial," passed an act increasing the bounty on the export of sugars to an extent assumed to be sufficient "to enable German exporters to compete against all comers in foreign markets"; advancing the import duty on sugars to a prohibitory degree; and fixing an internal-revenue tax on sugars to such an extent as to yield a net income to the state in excess of its disbursements on account of bounties on exports. The effects of the new statute have now become apparent and ominous. The foreign sugar market has responded to the increased bounty export by a proportionate decline in price; and a movement now finds favor to petition the Reichstag to make certain amendments in the existing statute so as to restrict instead of stimulating production, and to invite international negotiations for the gradual abolition of all export bounties, which have been proved to be simply a burden on the treasury, which pays them for the benefit of non-producing foreign countries.

The present burden which the sugar-bounty system entails upon the taxpayers of Europe is estimated at about $25,000,000 per annum, while the excise tax on sugar in Germany, France, and Austria is said to amount to $100,000,000 per annum. On the sugar consumed by the people of the continental nations of Europe which have adopted the bounty policy there is no bounty, but on the contrary an excise tax; the result of which legislation is to make exported sugars very cheap and home consumption abnormally dear. This is demonstrated by reference to the statistics of the comparative consumption of different countries. Thus in England, whose policy since 1874 has been to give her people sugar free of taxation, the per capita consumption has risen from fifty-six pounds in that year to eighty-six pounds in 1896; while the saving to the British people from the reduction of the cost of this one item of their living has been estimated to be at least 6,000,000 ($30,000,000) per annum. The great reduction in the price of sugar has also given a remarkable impetus to the British industry of manufacturing sweets, in the form of confectionery, preserves, jams, marmalades, etc., which last to a considerable extent have undoubtedly supplanted the use of butter. The present annual average consumption of sugar in Germany is reported to be about twenty-seven pounds per capita. In France