302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



required to make a pound of sugar, and on this basis ibe drawback 

 ■was calculated ; or for every bundred-weigbt of sugar exported, tbere 

 was granted a drawback of nearly twelve times tbe tax paid on each 

 hundred-weight of beets. For a number of years after 18G9 this 

 arrangement worked well, the drawback being about equivalent and 

 no more than the tax. But nothing stimulates human ingenuity in a 

 greater degree than the prospect of gain through the avoidance of a 

 tax ; and gradually a change in the condition of affairs took place. 

 By careful and scientific cultivation the saccharine element in the 

 beet was so much increased and the mechanical and chemical methods 

 of extracting it so greatly perfected, that while in 18G9 twelve pounds 

 of beets were needed in the average German factories to make one 

 pound of sugar, in 1878 the requisite quantity was 10-78 pounds ; in 

 1882, 10-08 pounds ; in 1884, 9-28 pounds ; in 1886, 8-80 pounds. 

 The effect of this was to make the drawback on the exports of 

 sugar no longer equivalent to the tax, and convert it into a bounty ; 

 or the exporter received a drawback as if he had paid an excise-tax 

 on twelve pounds of beets, when in reality he had paid on a much 

 smaller quantity — less than nine pounds after 1885. The fact that this 

 bounty was accruing was not unknown to the German Government ; 

 but as it became especially manifest during the years 1876-'79, when 

 the great depression of industry had developed a strong protectionist 

 feeling, nothing was done to stop it ; but on the contrary it w^as 

 popularly regarded with satisfaction. Under such favorable circum- 

 stances, the beet-root sugar product of Germany increased with great 

 rapidity ; and as the amount soon far exceeded any requirements for 

 domestic consumption, and as a net profit of from 6 to 7 per cent 

 was guaranteed to the manufactories by the expoi-t bounties, the 

 exportations soon assumed gigantic jDroportions, rising from about 

 500,000 cwt. in 187G to over 6,000,000 cwt. in 1885. The other states 

 of Continental Europe, finding the markets for their own product of 

 beet-root sugar everywhere supplanted by the German sugars and 

 their domestic manufacturers being even thereby brought to the verge 

 of ruin, made haste to follow the example of Germany, and improve 

 upon it, by offering larger bounties for the domestic production and 

 export of sugars than were offered elsewhere ; until the policy of 

 Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Russia during re- 

 cent years, seems to have been to stimulate their domestic product of 

 sugar to the greatest extent, and then enter into comjietition with 

 each other to see which of them could sell cheapest to foreigners at 

 the expense of their own people ; the home-grown sugars of France 

 and Germany, for example, selling, it is reported, in England for 

 about one half the prices paid for the same article by the French and 

 German people.* 



* In 1883-84, Germany, at an estimated cost of about $7,000,000 in the way of 

 export bounties, exported more than three fifths of her annual product of beet-sugar. 



