1 Avea., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 99 
effect of all this is that the continental consumers have to pay nearly three times as 
much for sugar made in their own countries as it sells for in London; and the 
Germans are now offering their best refined sugar in Sydney at £12 17s. 6d., 
or £2 less than what Queenslanders can make theirs for.* It must be 
obvious to anyone who seriousiy considers these facts and figures that not 
only is it impossible for us to invade the London market with any possible 
prospect of success, but we can scarcely hope to hold our own in Australasia; and 
that means nothing short of the extinction of the cane-sugar industry in the British 
colonies—an industry which, in Queensland alone, is responsible for the cultivation 
of 90,000 acres of land, producing £1,000,000 worth of sugar, which employs in 
mills and plantations 8,000 white men, and indirectly affords employment to some 
20,000 others, and whose manufacturing plants have cost upwards of £1,500,000, 
and is expanding with giant strides. That this danger, which is patent to all engaged 
in the production of cane sugar, should have so little impressed the public, both in 
England and Australia, so far as Queensland is concerned, is probably due to the 
fact that our colony is not, like the West Indies, wholly dependent upon sugar, and 
that with us the industry is not yet absolutely in extremis. It is doubtful, the 
circumstances of the two colonies differing as they do, whether those engaged in the 
industry in Queensland would ever allow themselves to be driven to the wall as 
the West Indians have been. They would probably put up the shutters before 
all was lost, and seek other occupations—perhaps in other countries; but the 
industry would be gone for ever, and the colony and the Empire the poorer. 
There is a certain callousness as to the future of the cane industry— 
born, perhaps, of a contentment with the present cheapness of beet sugar, but 
probably also due to the people not understanding that unless the bounty system is 
checkmated the end of cane-growing is within measurable distance; that once 
crushed it can never be revived, and that when it is destroyed, British consumers all 
over the world will be at the mercy of the continentals, whose statesmen openly 
declare that they look forward to the time when the British markets will be at their 
command and they will be able to make the English pay dearly for their present 
advantage. The only champion of the:bounty system who has appeared in the 
Australian Press is one who signs himself in the Townsville Star “ A German Critic.’ 
He sought to shatter the arguments of the anti-bounty party by pointing out that 
whereas the continental producers pay an Excise duty of £20,000,000 they. receive as 
bounty only £5,000,000. The “German Critic” but half stated his case, for he 
omitted all mention of the 33d. import duty, to which I have already referred, which, 
together with the bounty, gives, after deducting the Excise duty, State aid to the 
continental producers to the extent of £32,375,000. The “ German Critic” also ridicules 
the idea of there being any intention on the part of the continentais to crush the British 
colonial canegrowers, but German statesmen in the Reichstag, and writers in the 
German Press, have repeatedly assured us that that is their express intention—indeed, 
it is almost impossible to imagine why the continental peoples should for any other 
reason consent to be taxed to the extent of more than £32,500,000. It cannot be that 
the £170,000 given by Great Britain to the West Indies is anything but a patliative to 
stave over bad times until some fixed and effective policy is decided upon by the 
Imperial Government; and when some definite line of actioa is taken for the 
protection of the West Indies against the continental monopolists, Queensland must 
take care that she shares in its benefits, for, as I have already pointed out, the danger 
which threatens the industry in the West Indies menaces ours. A countervailing 
duty is the only practical remedy that has so far been proposed, and it has been 
objected to in England and in this country on various grounds. Both here and at home 
the freetrade fanatics have declared it to be opposed to their principles; but Mr. 
Chamberlain promptly disposed of their objections when he pointed out that the very 
essence of freetrade is the unhampered exchange of the natural products of different’ 
countries, and where their free exchange is interfered with by such circumstances 
as surround the sugar markets of the world any measure that would place them on an 
equal footing would be thoroughly consistent with the principles of freetrade. When the 
question of countervailing duties was first mooted in Queensland, in a paper written 
by myself for the Gatton Conference, timidity was the order of the day, and the then 
Minister for Agriculture declared them to be impossible, because of the treaties 
between Great Britain and Belgium and Germany. A fortnight later these treaties 
were denounced at the request of Canada. When the Townsville Chamber of 
Commerce was first approached by the Herbert River Farmers’ League, Mr. Allen 
brushed the matter aside with the remark that it was the duty of the British Govern- 
* The writer of this paper doubtless meant to say that the German sugar is offered in Sydney 
at £2 less than what Queenslanders can selé theirs for.-Ed. Q.4.J. 
