THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 775 



1875 (the year before the duties were remitted) to 110,000 tons in 

 1886, an increase in eleven years of 750 per cent. The part that beet- 

 root sugar has played in this increase is shown by the circumstance 

 that while in 1860 the proportion of this variety to the whole sugar- 

 product of the world (commercially reported) was less than 20 per 

 cent, the product for 1886-'87 is estimated as in excess of 55 per cent ; 

 Germany alone having increased her product from about 200,000 tons 

 in 1876 to 594,000 tons in 1880-'81, and to 1,155,000 tons in 1884-'85 ; 

 while the increase of the beet-sugar product in the other bounty-pay- 

 ing states of Europe was not disproportionate. 



Of this extraordinary increase of product, as large a proportion as 

 foreign markets would take was, as a matter of course, exported in 

 order to obtain the benefit of the government bounties on exports ; the 

 sugar-export of Germany alone increasing from about 500,000 cwt. in 



1876 to over 6,000,000 cwt. in 1885, and, with every increase of expor- 

 tation, the government disbursements on account of export bounties 

 increased proportionally. The export bounty paid by Russia is esti- 

 mated to have been as high at one time as $31.25 (6 8s.) per ton ; 

 and that of France at between $35 and $40 (7 and 8), entailing a 

 present direct and indirect tax (French colonial sugars being admitted 

 to the home market at reduced import rates), according to estimates re- 

 cently presented by M. Dauphin, in the French Chamber of Deputies, 

 of 3,280,000 ($16,400,000) per annum. In Germany the amount paid 

 in the way of subsidies on sugar was estimated by Deputy Gehlert, in 

 a speech in the German Reichstag in 1886, as having up to that time 

 approximated $40,000,000 ; while for the year 1885, $10,000,000, it was 

 claimed would be necessary, or an amount equal to the total wages paid 

 to all workmen in all the German sugar-refineries. As might also 

 have been expected, the profits of producers, and more especially of 

 the sugar-refiners, working under the bounty (export) system, were at 

 the same time enormously increased. In Germany the largest and 

 best-managed beet-sugar manufactories divided for a series of years 

 dividends to the extent of 60, 70, 90, and in one instance 125 per cent 

 per annum on the capital invested ; * and corresponding results were 

 also reported in Austria, Russia, France, and Belgium. How rapidly 

 and extensively sugar has declined in price, consequent upon such an 

 extraordinary and unnatural increase in production, has already been 



* "By a law passed in 1809 it was assumed that it took 12 centners of beet-roots to 

 give one centner of crude sugar, and a tax was levied on this basis, and a corresponding 

 drawback allowed on exported sugar. Since then great improvements have been made 

 in the process of manufacturing, so that but 1(H centners of roots are necessary to pro- 

 duce one centner of sugar instead of 12| as formerly ; but the Government continued to 

 grant a drawback on the basis of 12^. The export drawback thus became an enormous 

 premium to the producers, and the German manufacturers have been enabled to supply 

 all Europe with cheap sugar ; till, to protect themselves, the other states have had to in- 

 crease their duties on the imports of foreign sugar." Report to United States Depart- 

 ment of State by Commercial Agent Smith, Mayence, January, 18S7. 



