The Sugar War: Why Yakima Farmers Wanted Hawaii's Sweet Deal Axed

As stated in our last issue the Northern Pacific Railway company has been distributing beet seed, through H. P. Scudder, of North Yakima, for the purpose of ascertaining the production of sugar beets, and the amount of saccharine matter in various localities in the Yakima valley. Premiums are also promised to the most successful producer.

Germany has stimulated an enormous production of beet sugar through government bounties, and the United States annually pays that country millions of dollars for sugar. This country is capable of producing all the sugar used in home consumption, and the soils and climates of several states have been found particularly favorable for its production. The tests made have shown that numerous localities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho are exceptionally good for raising sugar beets. Our law makers in Congress seem anxious to stimulate the industry by a tariff on imported sugar, and if it applied generally, that effect would no doubt be obtained, although at the expense of the consumers. But unfortunately for the farmers of the Pacific Coast, they are brought directly in competition with the coolie labor of the Sandwich Islands, and it is useless to expect that the industry will increase and develop under these adverse conditions.

Under the Hawaiian reciprocity treaty the United States has lost seventy-two million dollars of revenue during the last twenty years. In 1896 their loss was about six million dollars, and under the provisions of the proposed Dingley bill it will be ten millions annually. If the United States derived any definite and corresponding benefit from this enormous concession, the people of the Pacific Coast might patriotically acquiesce because of the common good. But, in fact, the reciprocal benefit is extremely small, as our exports to the Islands are but a low percentage of the sugar imports alone. The real effect has been to enormously increase the fortunes of Spreckels and his associates who own the bulk of the sugar plantations of the Islands, and have a monopoly of the refining business west of the Missouri river.

Sugar can be raised in the Sandwich Islands with coolie labor and landed in San Francisco at less than two cents a pound. This is scarcely more than the duty on it from other countries. If the consumers on the Pacific Coast benefited by this concession, we all would perhaps be favorable to the reciprocity. But under the business combination of Spreckels and Havemeyer, the former is given the territory west of the Missouri river and in that district holds the price at the same figure that the eastern consumer pays. The product of the Islands in 1896 was 227,000 tons, most of which was imported into the United States. The profits of the refiner and the plantation owner in the Islands can be readily calculated by multiplying this production by the amount of the tariff paid on the sugars of other countries. As the consumption of the Spreckels territory west of the Missouri, is only about half the production of the Islands, it can readily be seen how little encouragement there is for the Pacific Coast farmer to go into beet sugar raising while he has to directly compete with coolie labor. We can hardly expect capitalists to invest their money in beet sugar factories until the Hawaiian reciprocity treaty is abrogated.