774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cheaper facilities for transportation have undoubtedly contributed to 

 such a result, it has been mainly due to an apparent desire, as M. 

 Leroy-Beaulieu has expressed it, on the part of the Governments of 

 France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Russia, " to 

 make their national sugar industry the greatest in the world" by 

 stimulating the domestic production of this commodity by the pay- 

 ment of extraordinary bounties on its exportation to other countries ; 

 or, in other words, by competing with one another in paying large sums 

 for the purpose of speedily getting rid, at little or no profit, of one of 

 the most valuable and highly-desired products of human industry. 



On the other hand, in order to neutralize to some extent the ex- 

 ceptional advantages enjoyed through such an economic policy by the 

 producers of beet-sugar in Europe, some of the cane-growing countries 

 have felt obliged to encourage, by subsidies or tax-exemptions, their 

 own sugar-production. In both Brazil and the Argentine Republic the 

 manufacturers of cane-sugar have obtained a guarantee from the state 

 of a five to six per cent return on their capital invested ; while all the 

 machinery needed in this industry may be imported free of duty. In 

 the Spanish West Indies the home government has finally (1887) felt 

 compelled to relinquish the export duties on sugars the produce of 

 Cuba and Porto Rico which have long been regarded as almost in- 

 dispensable on account of revenue necessities ; while in South Africa 

 and Australia the production of sugar has also been encouraged to 

 such an extent that both of these countries will hereafter be undoubt- 

 edly included among the number of important sugar-exporting regions. 

 In Central America, the British and Dutch West India Islands, Guiana, 

 and India (which last produces more sugar than any other country) 

 production has not as yet been artificially encouraged, and, with the 

 exception of the levying of export taxes in certain localities, neither 

 have any impediments been placed in the way of the natural growth 

 of production. But at the same time it can not be doubted that the 

 recent increased facilities for transportation and communication have, 

 as before pointed out, been in the nature of a stimulus to the produc- 

 tion of sugar, in common with all other commodities, and have opened 

 up large and fertile sections of the earth, which a quarter of a century 

 ago were practically inaccessible. 



Under such conditions the increase in the production of sugar 

 entering into the world's commerce, and available for general con- 

 sumption, has been extraordinary. Mr. Sauerbeck estimates the in- 

 crease from 1872-'73 to 1885-'86 to have been G8 per cent. Other 

 authorities estimate the increase from 1853 to 1884, exclusive of the 

 product of India and China, to have been at the rate of 30 per cent 

 for each decade or about 100 per cent compounded. In the Hawaiian 

 Islands, where a remission of duties on sugars exported to the United 

 States is equivalent to an export bounty of about 100 per cent, the 

 domestic production of sugar has increased from about 12,000 tons in 



