GOVERNMENTAL INTERFERENCE. 301 



the same continue operative to-day in spite of all the customs barriers 

 against international trade that have been erected. All the indications, 

 furthermore, are at present in favor of a renewal of commercial treaties 

 or alliances between the Continental states, with a view through mutual 

 concessions, of establishing better trade-relations between the partici- 

 pating powers than now exist ; and the announcement has been made 

 that preliminary negotiations for this purpose have begun between 

 Germany and Austria and Germany and Italy. One project pro- 

 posed, by Professor Kaufmann, of the University of Tubingen, which 

 has been much discussed, and the adoption of which, in the opinion 

 of not a few, is not improbable, is the formation of a Zollverein, or 

 commercial union, among the nations of Central Europe, with a view, 

 as the " Kolnische Zeitung " (which is regarded to some extent as an 

 official organ of the German Government) has expressed it, "of ex- 

 panding their markets by means of treaties, so that the surpluses at 

 any one place within their dominions may serve to make up for the 

 deficiencies in another," and which, more especially, would "find its 

 account in collectively fighting against economical commonwealths, 

 like the United States, Russia, China, and Great Britain, which em- 

 brace whole continents." * 



The attempt to artificially stimulate the manufacture of beet-sugar 

 in the states of Continental Europe, and at the same time to obviate the 

 evils from the production of this commodity in excess of local or do- 

 mestic demand by the payment of bounties on its exportation, has con- 

 stituted such an extraordinary factor of disturbances in the world's 

 recent economic history as to be worthy of special narration and at- 

 tention. 



Although the practice of stimulating through high protective 

 duties and export bounties the production of beet-root sugar in Europe 

 in competition with the cane-sugar product of the tropics dales back 

 to the first quarter of the century, the present complicated and curious 

 state of affairs is really due to an unexpected result of the German 

 method of taxing beet-sugar, which was adopted in 1869. The idea 

 involved in this method was, in brief, to collect an excise or internal- 

 revenue tax on all sugar produced ; in the first instance by taxing the 

 raw beets, and subsequently to give a drawback on whatever sugar 

 was exported equivalent to the tax paid on the beets from which the 

 sugar was made. At the outset about twelve pounds of beets were 



* Such a formation of the " United States of Europe " — this phrase being borrowed 

 from the "Kolnische Zeitung" — coupled with the avowed objects to be prospectively 

 attained by it, would have a peculiar significance for the United States of America, as 

 the feeling in Europe in respect to the export trade of the United States in respect to 

 food-products has not been and is not now friendly. " The prohibition of her hog-prod- 

 ucts, the successive additions to the duties on grain and cattle, and the readiness with 

 which any complaint against an American staple is taken up and widely circulated, often 

 in a grossly exaggerated form, are indications of what would be the position of such a 

 customs union toward the United States, could it become an accomplish^ fact." 



