934 



READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



and irregular effect of the partial remission on Cuban sugar. 

 Except for this, we could say with confidence that from 1897 to 

 191 3 the price of sugar was raised, the country over, by the full 

 amount of the duty one and two-thirds cents a pound. Allowing 

 for the modifying influence of the Cuban remission, we may make 

 our calculations on the assumption that the effect of the duty dur- 

 ing the years immediately preceding 191 3 was to raise the price of 

 all sugar by one and one-half cents. The figure may not be accu- 

 rate to the last dot ; but the economist is fortunate when he can 

 measure his results with so close an approach to exactness as this. 

 Of the tax paid by consumers in the form of enhanced price, 

 a little less than one-half went to the government treasury ; the 

 rest more than half was handed over to the various favored 

 sugar producers. Let us imagine the United States government 

 to present an account, rendering to its wards, the sugar con- 

 sumers, a statement of what had become of the sums collected 

 from them. The government would properly enter on the debit 

 side the total which it had taken from the consumers, on the 

 credit side an enumeration of the various ways in which it had 

 distributed the total. The fiscal year 1909-19 10 may be taken 

 as representative. For that year the account would stand thus : 



UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IN ACCOUNT WITH SUGAR 

 CONSUMERS, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1909-1910 



