The Sugar Trust Checks In at the Rainier

H. O. Havemeyer and his wife, of New York, are at the Rainier Hotel. The Havemeyer family have been famous sugar refiners in this country for over two generations. They are not directly engaged in the business now, but are largely interested in the American Sugar Refining Company, which has swallowed up a large number of concerns and practically controls the sugar industry east of the Missouri River.

"A little more than a year ago," said Mr. Havemeyer last night at the Rainier Hotel, "the sugar trust was declared illegal, so eighteen sugar concerns got together and incorporated under the laws of New Jersey, with a capital stock of $73,000,000, and since that time three more companies have come into the fold. Spreckels, with his Philadelphia plant, is with us, but his Pacific coast refineries are not in the company. The sugar business has greatly developed in the last quarter of a century. My father thought he did a great business when in one year he refined 1,000,000 pounds of sugar. His profit was about 7 cents a pound. Last year the American Sugar Refining Company made 1,300,000 tons of sugar and was glad to make a profit of one-fifth of a cent per pound. The McKinley tariff limiting the duty on refined sugar to 15 per cent has reduced the profit greatly to the refiner, but in my opinion this will cut no figure against the Republican party in the coming campaign. The people wanted it so, and Congress has simply acceded to their wishes. We don't try to sell to the West. The Missouri is the boundary line where Eastern and Western competition on sugar meets. I think Portland will probably end in being a manufacturing city, but Seattle and Tacoma will do the shipping trade of the future on the Pacific coast north of San Francisco."