1875 (the year before the duties were remitted) to 110,000 tons in 1886, an increase in eleven years of 750 per cent. The part that beetroot sugar has played in this increase is shown by the circumstance that while in 1860 the proportion of this variety to the whole sugar product of the world (commercially reported) was less than 20 per cent, the product for 1886-'87 is estimated as in excess of 55 per cent; Germany alone having increased her product from about 200,000 tons in 1876 to 594,000 tons in 1880-'81, and to 1,155,000 tons in 1884-'85; while the increase of the beet-sugar product in the other bounty-paying states of Europe was not disproportionate.
Of this extraordinary increase of product, as large a proportion as foreign markets would take was, as a matter of course, exported in order to obtain the benefit of the government bounties on exports; the sugar-export of Germany alone increasing from about 500,000 cwt. in 1876 to over 6,000,000 cwt. in 1885, and, with every increase of exportation, the government disbursements on account of export bounties increased proportionally. The export bounty paid by Russia is estimated to have been as high at one time as $31.25 (£6 8s.) per ton; and that of France at between $35 and $40 (£7 and £8), entailing a present direct and indirect tax (French colonial sugars being admitted to the home market at reduced import rates), according to estimates recently presented by M. Dauphin, in the French Chamber of Deputies, of £3,280,000 ($16,400,000) per annum. In Germany the amount paid in the way of subsidies on sugar was estimated by Deputy Gehlert, in a speech in the German Reichstag in 1886, as having up to that time approximated $40,000,000; while for the year 1885, $10,000,000, it was claimed would be necessary, or an amount equal to the total wages paid to all workmen in all the German sugar-refineries. As might also have been expected, the profits of producers, and more especially of the sugar-refiners, working under the bounty (export) system, were at the same time enormously increased. In Germany the largest and best-managed beet-sugar manufactories divided for a series of years dividends to the extent of 60, 70, 90, and in one instance 125 per cent per annum on the capital invested;[1] and corresponding results were also reported in Austria, Russia, France, and Belgium. How rapidly and extensively sugar has declined in price, consequent upon such an extraordinary and unnatural increase in production, has already been
- ↑ "By a law passed in 1809 it was assumed that it took 12 12 centners of beet-roots to give one centner of crude sugar, and a tax was levied on this basis, and a corresponding drawback allowed on exported sugar. Since then great improvements have been made in the process of manufacturing, so that but 10 12 centners of roots are necessary to produce one centner of sugar instead of 1212 as formerly; but the Government continued to grant a drawback on the basis of 1212. The export drawback thus became an enormous premium to the producers, and the German manufacturers have been enabled to supply all Europe with cheap sugar; till, to protect themselves, the other states have had to increase their duties on the imports of foreign sugar."—Report to United States Department of State by Commercial Agent Smith, Mayence, January, 1887.
