Thus while subject to all the fluctuations of foreign markets, this product exercises no appreciable effect in determining prices. If the Louisiana crop should be a total failure this year, the price of sugar throughout the civilized world would not thereby be increased a fraction of a cent per pound. The Louisiana planter can look for no compensation for a short crop in higher prices. His contribution to the general demand for sweets is relatively a very small one. All the cane-sugar made in the United States during the year 1884 was 301,712,230 pounds, while we imported during the same year a total of 2,641,258,139 pounds. Thus the home cane-growers only supplied about one-ninth of the demand. If they should go out of the business at once by common accord, our grocers' bills would not apprise us of the change, for foreign sugars would immediately fill the gap in the market.

We Americans are the greatest sugar-eating people in the world, and our consumption is constantly increasing. It has almost doubled. since 1867, and is now, including all kinds of sweets except glucose and honey, fifty-six pounds a year per capita of the population. Yet our domestic sugar-product is not increasing. It reached the highest point in 1861, and has never since approached the figures of that year. Let me say before we get further into the subject, that the Louisiana product of cane sugar is practically the national product.

tion. It will be seen that there was on the whole a steady progress until 1833. This was due to the Clay Tariff of 1816, which levied a duty of 3 cents per pound on foreign sugars. In 1832 the duty was reduced to 22 cents. and this blow was so severely felt that, of 700 plantations worked in 1833, 166 were abandoned during the ensuing 4 years' operation of the new tariff. The industry revived and enjoyed a period of great prosperity, which culminated in the Civil War. This period was the golden age of Louisiana, and the older people always speak of it with a sigh of regret. It was then that the Louisiana sugar-planters became the most cultivated, proud, and luxurious class in all the South. Their great white mansions, standing in groves of magnolias and orange-trees, on the shores of rivers and bayous, were the scenes of a lavishly generous hospitality. The wealth drawn from the soil by the slave labor under their control was poured into the lap of New Orleans with liberal hand, and made of that city a place of great commercial activities, and at the same time a social and intellectual capital whose influence was felt throughout the Gulf States.

The war changed all that. The slave-labor system, on which the sugar industry rested, was destroyed. Hostile armies ravaged the sugar districts. Houses were burned, mills destroyed, and the cane-fields grew up to weeds. In 1864 only five thousand tons of sugar were made in Louisiana. With the return of peace, however, the planters, always a peculiarly intelligent and enterprising class, courageously set to work to rebuild their broken fortunes. They were greatly aided by the tariff of 1864, by which Congress generously accorded a protective duty of three cents per pound on sugar, at a time when the rebellion was at its height, and nearly all the sugar planters were in the ranks of the rebel armies. Under the stimulus of this tariff, the production of sugar rapidly increased, until it reached 75,000 tons in 1870. Then the changeful tariff policy of a changeful Congress brought a fresh disaster. Down went the duty to an average of two cents per pound, and down went the crop from 75,000 tons in 1870 to 45,000 in 1873. The value of plantation property fell one-half, and two-thirds of the sugar commission houses of New Orleans went into bankruptcy.

In 1875 the duty was advanced to an average of 22 cents, and the production increased to 110,000 tons in 1880, 120,000

in 1882, and 128,000 in 1884. But now arose a new menace to the much-vexed industry. The German Government stimulated the production of beet-sugar by a law which in effect gave a large bounty on all sugar exported. The beets were taxed at the rate of 16 marks per 1000 kilograms, and a drawback of 20.80 marks given on each 100 kilograms of sugar exported. Now, as 1000 kilograms of beets will produce 100 kilograms of sugar, the bounty on the sugar exported amounted to 4.80 marks per kilogram. An enormous increase of the German output resulted. It went up from 644,775 tons in 1881-82, to 1,150,000 tons in 1884-85. A very large part of this increased production was thrown upon the American market. Our importations of European beet-sugar in 1884 were double those of 1883, and twelvefold what they were in 1882. The price of sugar fell so low that the Louisiana planter, even with the 22 cents duty in his favor, could only save himself from actual loss on his crop by practicing the closest economies in its production. Many of the Cuban planters were ruined. It is said that, after paying freight, brokerage, and other expenses connected with marketing their crops, there remained to the Cuban only about a cent a pound to meet the cost of producing it.

At the date this article is written (March, 1886) the situation is improving. A reaction has followed the artificial stimulus given to beet-sugar making by government bounties. Besides, the German law soon expires by limitation, and the beet-sugar producers will be thrown back upon the old law, not so favorable to exporting. In Louisiana the planters feel renewed confidence, believing that the

IN THE QUARTERS.

A PLANTER.

worst of their struggle with beet-sugar is over and that they have a fair chance for moderately profitable operations in future, if Congress will not diminish the advantage they now derive from the tariff.

The seeker after information concerning the cane-sugar industry in Louisiana is astonished at the outset of his researches by the significant fact that the acreage planted in cane has not increased during the past quarter of a century, but has, on the contrary, decreased. This is a statement that can be made of no other important agricultural crop produced in the United States. It cannot be said that it is due to the destruction of the system of slave labor, nor to any local peculiarity of climate or population. The cotton crop of the State has increased; so has the rice crop, which is cultivated on the same kind of land which grows the cane and in the same parishes. It is true that cane planting and grinding require a stricter and more systematic labor organization than raising cotton or rice, but experienced planters now get as good results per acre with free labor as they

formerly did with slave. Mr. John Dymond, one of the largest planters in the State and one of the bestinformed men on all matters concerning the sugar industry, says that Louisiana has the capacity economically to produce 500,000 tons of sugar a year, which is about four times her present production. Then why does not the annual product increase with the rapidly increasing consumption of sugar? The reason is that the sugar-planter stands on quite a different footing from the cottonplanter or the wheatfarmer. He must produce his staple in competition with the slave, coolie, peon, and other low grades of labor employed in its culture in other countries. He could not produce it at all save for the heavy tax on imported sugars levied by our tariff schedules. He can feel no certainty that this tax will not be varied to his serious detriment, if not to his absolute ruin, at any meeting of Congress. Consequently he is not willing to take the risk of opening new plantations or enlarging old ones. In fact he only continues in the business because he knows of no other way to utilize his fertile acres. Making sugar is his trade. He loves it and is unwilling to abandon it. Its very uncertainty has a fascination for him. Besides, it combines manufacturing with agriculture, and thus develops intellectual faculties not much called into play in ordinary farming. The planter must have the machinery and appliances for grinding the cane and converting the juice into sugar and molasses, and must understand their economical use. If he is unskillful, his product will not bring as much into one or two cents per pound as that of his skillful neighbor. To be successful he must also understand the management of labor, the purchase of supplies, the marketing of his product, and the diking and draining of his land. He must, therefore, be farmer, manufacturer, merchant, and civil engineer combined. I have said that the sugar-planters of Louisiana are a peculiarly intelligent class. They could not

be otherwise without going to the wall. It is not a business for dull, unprogressive men. These planters have an association which supports an experimental farm, where new varieties of cane are raised, new machinery tried, and the best scientific knowledge put into practice. They are a force in the politics of the State strong enough to defeat, recently, for reëlection a United States senator, because he was willing to uphold the sugar tariff as a revenue tariff only, and not as a tariff based on the principle of protection. The planters saw that if there was to be no principle of national policy underlying the sugar duty they were liable at any time to be ruined by the reduction of the duty to a point where it would yield the most revenue. Evidently, they said, the duty would produce more money to the Treasury if placed just below the figure which would enable the Louisiana planter to compete with foreign sugars.

The reader who has no interest in sugar

other than as a consumer, will, I apprehend, be ready by this time to ask whether it is worth while to maintain by a high protective tariff an industry not indigenous and not capable, after nearly a hundred years of existence, of standing alone. Now let us hear the planter's argument for a protective tariff on his product. First, he says that cane-growing is not a forced and unnatural industry. The cane is not indigenous in this country, but neither is wheat nor oats nor cotton. There is no greater danger of frost injuring the cane crop of Louisiana than there is of its injuring the corn crop of Illinois. After a century of cultivation the cane may well claim to be a fully naturalized crop. Second, he argues that no tax by which money is raised to support the Federal Government is fairer or less onerous than the tariff on sugar. The rich use the most sugar and thus pay the heaviest tax per capita, but all pay something, as is just, because all are protected and benefited by the Government. In