ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF SUGAR. 3 
the industry in Cuba, total imports of sugar into the United States in 1896 were even 
more than in the previous year. 
Still more remarkable is the fact that imports from Europe for ’96 were five times 
as much as during the previous year. For the calendar year 1896 the United States 
paid Europe over $25,000,000 for sugar. All but a fraction of this was from sugar 
beets grown in Europe and worked into sugar at European factories, the shipment of 
which to this country was stimulated by export bounties. If Europe can make such 
an increase in one year, what may she not accomplish within the next five years, if the 
American market continues at her mercy? 
Quite as momentous is the enormous increase during the past year in imports of 
sugar from the Drient. This sugar is largely grown by the coolie labor of China, the 
East Indies, the Philippines and Oceanica, or the fellah labor of Africa. English 
operators of Egyptian sugar plantations worked by feliahs for a few cents a day were 
paid over $3,000,000 for their sugar shipped to the United States last year, or eight 
times as much as the year previous. The increase from the coolie-grown product of 
the East Indies, and from the debased labor of the Philippine Islands, is equally as 
great. Unless protected against the yellow labor of the East, it is a question whether 
its manipulation of the sugar cane will yet crowd to the rear the forceful European 
beet-sugar industry. 
Imports of cane sugar from ‘‘the countries to the south of us’’ show a decided 
falling off. In spite of the Cuban war, it is a matter of common notoriety that the 
competition of European beet sugars has so usurped the sugar markets of the world 
that the industry is no longer profitable under even the most favored natural condi- 
tions in British West Indies, and Her Majesty’s government is now seeking some 
means of remedying the difficulty. Mr Gladstone and other British free-traders are 
vutspoken against the German export bounty. 
THE SANDWICH ISLAND INJUSTICE. 
But the worst and most inexcusable phase of the sugar situation is the unjust, 
unfair, illegal, and unbusiness-like competition of sugar from the Hawaiian Islands. 
This sugar is admitted free under the reciprocity treaty which has been in effect with 
the Sandwich Islands since 1876. In the following twenty years, the United States 
sent to the Islands only $56,000,000 worth of exports, while we imported from the 
Islands $140, 000,000 worth of sugar. The Islands have thus made $84,000,000 at the 
expense of the United States. The duties remitted on Hawaiian sugar since 1876 
now amount to over $61,000,000. In other words, this government has allowed the 
Sandwich Islands over $61,000,000 in bounties to develop their cane-sugar industry at 
the expense of American farmers and to the loss of the federal revenues. Contract 
coolie labor is employed to raise this cane. 
THE WORLD’S PRODUCTION OF SUGAR. 
It is now two-thirds larger than ten years ago. Production and consumption are 
increasing between 6 and 7 per cent per annum. Thus the industry is doubling itself 
every fifteen years. Beet sugar was an ‘nsignificant quantity until within quite recent 
years. But look at its gain lately: 
World’s production. Tons of 2240 pounds. 
1884 1894 
Beet sugar, 2,690,000 4,790,000 18 
Cane sugar, 2,180,000 3,080,000 41 
Gain per cent. 
