THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY. U 



an enormous indirect bounty, production in the tropics would be vastly stimulated, and 

 those regions would supply this market with millions cf dollars' worth of produce and 

 materials now obtained from other countries. 



INCREASED TAXATION AND XEW TAXES. 



There would naturally be a constant ratio of increase in such loss of tariff revenue 

 on tropical production. Of course this loss of $100,000,000 in the customs would have 

 to be made good by increased direct taxation of our people here at home. 



The government expenditures incident to the war of 1898 and a policy of "expan- 

 sion" will extend the annual expenditure of 1890 to '96 by a sum variously estimated at 

 from $100,000,000 to $300,000,000 yearly. It is easy to see how, with loss of revenue inci- 

 dent to tropical free trade, taxes are likely to be increased by fully $250,000,000 annually. 



This statement is not at all extravagant, in view of the proposed larger army, 

 which alone is estimated to cost $90,000,000 a year by its author (Mr. Hull), and $150,000- 

 000 by the minority of the House committee on military affairs. If the army costs 

 $120,000,000 a year, it will equal what France and Germany each pay for an army five 

 times as large. Besides this,, the United States is paying out $150,000,000 yearly for 

 pensions. 



With decreasing imports and increasing expenses, surely this is no time to sacrifice 

 the customs revenue. Indeed, a revenue tariff on certain articles now admitted free of 

 duty, may be necessary. 



TO SACRIFICE THE AMERICAN FARMER 



for the benefit of colonial syndicates and Spanish real estate owners in the tropics is 

 too preposterous to be seriously entertained for a moment. Yet it is the price demanded 

 by certain annexationists. They bitterly resent the idea that the United States can 

 impose duties on produce from the Philippines or Porto Rico after those islands have 

 been ceded to the United States, but boldly demand free trade. 



This is cot the place to consider the various suggestions that have been made 

 concerning the relations of the United States to the East and West Indies. But true it 

 is that in an economic sense the issue is mainly agricultural. The farmer is the man 

 whose business will be hurt the worst by annexation. The farmer is the man who, 

 already bearing an undue proportion of the taxes, will be loaded down still more by the 

 proposed additional taxes of $250,000,000 yearly. To rob him of his best market, to 

 destroy his most profitable crops, to annihilate the sugar industry that means millions 

 for a new and money-making crop, and then to pile more taxes onto him no! Amer- 

 ican farmers will not for a moment submit to any such proposition. No political party 

 has yet indorsed such an outrageous plan. The president is firmly against it if his advice 

 about Cuba is to be taken at what he says. 



INDUSTRIES TO BE HURT BY ABSORPTION. 



The best things in agriculture to-day in the United States are the specialties that 

 free trade with the tropics would knock out. That policy would permanently blight Flor- 

 ida and almost annihilate her agricultural industries, making Florida only a way sta- 

 tion to the tropics. It would seriously compete with the important industry of growing 

 early fruits and vegetables, both in southern and northern states. It would probably 

 obliterate cigar leaf tobacco culture in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 

 Wisconsin, Florida and Texas. It would transfer to Ponce, Santiago, Havana and Manila 

 the vast cigar-manufacturing industry of the United States, whose skilled labor and mil- 

 lions upon millions of capital could not compete with labor at one-fourth our wages 



