3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



iug the already large number of Malay pirates, the Dutch ministry, 

 in 18SG, decided, besides making advances to planters on their crops, 

 to purchase from their colonial planters five eighths of their produc- 

 tion at a price that would entail a sacrifice on the Dutch treasury of about 

 40,000,000 francs, or 88,000,000.* And since then it seems to have 

 been well established, that German beet-root sugar has been and is now 

 exported half round the globe, and largely sold in (Singapore, the cen- 

 ter of the great sugar-producing countries of Asia, at a price which 

 makes its use to the manufactories of preserved fruits more advanta- 

 geous than the sugars of Java and the other islands of the Indian 

 Ai'chipelago. A like exportation of Continental sugars, artificially 

 reduced in price, to Australia, also threatens with ruin the developing 

 cane-sugar industry of these countries. 



Finally, the states of Continental Europe, in which the burden of 

 taxation is already most grievous, and in most of which there is a 

 regular and increasing annual deficit, are beginning to feel that they 

 can no longer endure the strain upon their finances which the bounty- 

 paying system to their sugar-industries entails, and which has not 

 brought prosperity to them or the state. In this reaction, Russia has 

 taken the lead, and is stopping her bounties as rapidly as possible ; 

 and all the other states exhibit unmistakable evidences of a desire to 

 follow her examjjle. The difficulty, however, is that so much of their 

 respective sugar-industries as has been called into existence artificially 

 would be immediately ruined, with great loss and suffering to a large 

 number of people, if the bounties were at once discontinued ; and the 

 same result would follow by the putting an end to any possibility of 

 exporting, if one, or all but one, of the states should cease paying 

 bounties, and one, like France, should continue to do so. Earnest 

 efforts are accordingly being made for the holding of an international 

 congress, with the object of agreeing upon a mutual abandonment of 

 the bounty system ; and the official announcement has been made by 

 the British Government that Austria-Hungary, Germany, Holland, 

 Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Denmark have agreed to participate ; 

 Russia and France having not as yet declared themselves on the sub- 

 ject of attendance. 



In face of this experience, the Government of the Argentine Re- 

 public has determined to appropriate an annual sum of $550,000 

 for three years, in order to stimulate the export trade of that country 

 in beef and mutton for the European market. 



The recent experience of France in attempting to stimulate ship- 

 building and ship-using, through a carefully-devised system of sub- 

 sidies and bounties, furnishes another illustration of the effect of gov- 



* " Journal dcs Fabrlcants dc Sucre," October, ISSfi. 



A further idea of the depression of the sucjar-trado in Java may bo j^ained from the 

 fact, that the imports of raw sugar from the island by Uolland have declined — comparing 

 the results of the year 1870 with those of 1885— about 90 per cent. 



