ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF SUGAR. q 
total consumption during this period. The table also shows that not only did the 
total consumption of sugar double in less than sixteen years, but the per capita con- 
sumption increased fully one-half during the same time. 
It also appears that the United State paid out for imported sugar during these 
16 years almost $1,500, 000,000. If the imports of molasses, etc, were included and ex- 
ports of saccharine deducted, the figures would show fully this amount. In other 
words, this country has paid out an average of just about $100,000,000 per vear for 
sugar for nearly two decades, in the face of the steadily declining values of sugar 
indicated in the Jast column. Still more startling is the fact that our per capita 
consumption, around 65 pounds annually, is two and three times as much as the 
consumption in Germany, France and other sugar-producing countries. 
THE AMERICAN FARMERS DEMAND 
a fair chance to produce everything our people ccnsume that can be grown in the 
United States. They want to begin with sugar, both cane and beet. Why? Because 
with reasonable protection and factories to work up these crops, sugar cane and sugar 
beets promise to afford farmers the new source of reasonable profits that are impera- 
tively required to help relieve agricultural depression. Sugar beets at $4 to $5 per 
ton, or cane at corresponding prices, are fairly profitable crops compared to cereals, 
potatoes, tobacco, cotton, etc. 
An acre of corn at the west, yielding 40 bushels of grain worth 15c per bushel, 
will buy something more than 100 Ibs of granulated sugar at the grocery store. That 
same acre of land devoted to sugar beets will produce 2000 to 3000 lbs of refined sugar, 
like the finest white sugar you can buy. The corn under such conditions returns 
about $6 per acre for all the labor and capital invested in that crop. Sugar beets 
yield $25 tu $50 per acre, and while they require far more labor, they pay for it end 
leave a net profit of $10 to $25 per acre, which is handsome compared to the meager 
returns from corn, wheat, oats, etc. 
SUGAR AND THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 
The country has been convulsed over the proposition of free silver coinage at 16 
to 1. The most ardent advocates of that policy have not proposed to coin more than 
100, 000, 000 silver dollars per year. Now without discussing the pros and cons of the 
silver question, no one will deny the benefits that would accrue by keeping at home 
the 100,000, 000 of (gold standard) dollars that are sent out of the country each year 
for sugar. If this sugar is all paid for in money (instead of partly in merchandise), 
keeping at home this vast sum would inflate our per capita circulation nearly $1.50 
each year, or $15 in ten years, and in 15 years it would double our present per capita 
circulation. Certainly ic would help to solve the currency problem to keep at home 
the money that now goes abroad for sugar. 
CAN THIS COUNTRY PRODUCE ITS OWN SUGAR? 
There is no longer any doubt about it. The sugar beet can be grown over a large 
part of the United States, and in some sections attains a perfection never approached 
in other countries. 
The sugar, cane is adapted to a far larger area than has been generally supposed. 
The maps forming the frontispieces to this book show the probable possible dis- 
tribution of these commercial crops. The lines on the map No 8 are based on the 
