9i6 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



a period of at least seven years from the date of the enactment 

 of the law, March 26, 1897. The Michigan Sugar Company, 

 with a factory at Bay City, in the campaign of 1898, made over 

 7,500,000 pounds of sugar and, therefore, claimed $75,000 in 

 bounties from the state. By 1899 there were eight companies 

 in operation, and their combined bounty claims for that year 

 amounted to $301,106.13. 



The legislature of 1899, frightened by the large amount of 

 the claims made under this bounty law, amended the act, reduc- 

 ing the bounty to 1 cent per pound ; but the legislature refused 

 to fix the limit of the bounty at $25,000 as recommended by 

 the governor, and accordingly the governor vetoed the new 

 law, leaving the old law still in effect. The matter was then 

 brought before the Supreme Court, of Michigan in connection 

 with a suit for bounties unpaid, and the court declared the law 

 unconstitutional, since it was " not a proper expense of the state 

 on which a tax could be predicated." A large part of the indus- 

 try thus artificially stimulated remained in Michigan even after 

 the bounty law was declared unconstitutional, and Michigan 

 to-day ranks as the third largest beet-sugar-producing state in 

 the Union. 



The legislature of the state of New York, on May 18, 1897, 

 passed a bounty law, appropriating $25,000 to be given to beet- 

 sugar manufacturers, provided none received more than i cent per 

 pound, and provided also that the factories should pay to the 

 farmers not less than $5 per ton for the beets used in manu- 

 facturing the sugar on which the bounty was paid. In 1898, 

 $50,000 was appropriated to cover the expense of this bounty. 

 Though the maximum limit of the bounty was subsequently re- 

 duced to ^ cent per pound, the policy of paying a direct bounty 

 for sugar production in the state of New York was not entirely 

 abandoned until the year 1907. Of three factories operating in 

 New York under the law at various times, one still survives. 



Utah is one of the few states which has paid a sugar bounty 

 without any apparent subsequent regrets or change of heart. In 

 the year 1896, the state voted a one-cent-per-pound bounty to 

 the new factory at Lehi, and it seems to be pretty generally 



