THE CUBA RE V I E W 



29 



Sugar as a Factor in World's Progress 



A discussion of sugar from a somewhat unusual angle is contributed to the March 

 number of World's Work by Edwin E. Slosson. The article is one of a series under the 

 general heading, "Science Remaking the World," and is concerned with the influence of 

 sugar on the course of history and on the world's economic development. Much of the 

 article is historical and deals with matter that is more or less familiar to sugar men, but 

 its interpretative features are distinctive and many of its passages contain points of 

 particular interest. 



Sugar Power in History. 



After tracing the introduction of sugar into Europe Mr. Slosson observes: 

 "The influence of the sugar power on history began about five hundred years ago 

 and it has figured in international affairs ever since. The first sugar trust was in the 

 hands of the Venetian merchants, who were the middle men of the trade between the 

 Orient and the Occident. They catered to the taste for sweets, as well as other Eastern 

 luxuries, that had been brought back to Europe by such Crusaders as returned from 

 their fruitless efforts to gain the Holy Land. They bought up sugar from Syria, Egypt, 

 and the islands of the Mediterranean, where the growing of cane had been introduced 

 by the Arabs, and, after refining it according to a process of their own, sold it to the 

 Spanish, Portuguese, French and English. In 1319 Venetian ships brought 100,000 

 pounds of sugar to England t'o be exchanged for wool. "Venetian loaves" {pahis de 

 Venise) were good as gold the world over." 



Object of Colonization 



After describing how exploration and colonization was largely a race between 

 nations to secure supplies of sugar and showing the influence of the industry in intro- 

 ducing slavery into portions of the Western hemisphere, the author touches upon the 

 early encouragement of beet sugar production by Napoleon as an incident to his struggle 

 with England. Referring to the development of these two sources of sugar he remarks: 



"Cane sugar continued to rely upon its natural advantages of tropical sunshine and 

 cheap labor, while beet sugar was promoted by the combined skill of the chemist 

 and agriculturist as well as favored by the legislator. Under a strict regime of eugenics 

 the beets got sweeter and sweeter year by year, while by the skillful use of bounties 

 beet sugar was forced into markets which the cane once controlled. Even the English, 

 to whom free trade was almost a religious dogma, were for a time tickled to see — for 

 so they saw it — the continental powers taxing themselves in competition for the privilege 

 of supplying the British jam factories with sugar at less than cost of production. The 

 English only feared that the continental powers would too soon ruin themselves in this 

 race for the British market and so sugar would go up. But for some mysterious reason 

 the natural and immutable laws of commerce failed to work in this case, for the high 

 protection countries prospered most and it was the British Empire that was threatened 

 with ruin. So the British with their usual good sense shelved the dogma that would 

 not work and negotiated the Brussels Convention of 1903, by which the powers mutually 

 agreed to abolish bounties." 



Mr. Slosson devotes some attention to the influence of sugar on the fiscal policy 

 of nations. He says in this connection: 



"It was sugar that forced England to abandon her traditional free-trade policy and 

 to adopt protection in all its forms: tariff duties, preferential rates, limitation of im- 

 portations, embargo, government control and subsidies for home production. Every- 

 where sugar is the cyclone centre of commercial conflict and economic discussion." 



United States Tariff Policy. 

 Of the United States he remarks that it has the advantage of two strings to its 

 bow, through the possession of both tropical and temperate territory. He mention*; 



