ion, under this provision. I see no reason why the present production of 500,000,000 pounds, enough to supply the people west of the Missouri River, shall not be increased to two or three billion pounds by Asiatic labor at $12 a month. They can produce sugar for less than a cent and a half a pound, and I venture to say it can not be produced in Louisiana for less than 34 cents a pound. They raise in Louisiana a ton and a half to the acre, as against 4 tons in these marvelously rich islands. In Louisiana they must pay American citizens and American laborers, but in Hawaii they employ contract slave labor-Asiatic labor.

In the Hawaiian Annual I find the following:

I see no reason, from present conditions of the sugar industry or from any outlook, to believe that it is not to continue to be the leading and profitable industry of these islands for years to come. With annexaion there should a somewhat more extended cultivation of sugar cane be made possible by artesian wells and pumping plants; hence a larger output than at present; but I would not, at the same time, neglect any other industry that offered a fair return for the capital invested.

One can not doubt that the present prosperity of the islands is due almost wholly to its sugar industry. Contrast, if you please, the condition of the whole country in 1860 and now.

So I say, Mr. President, that there is no doubt, after investigating these islands—and I visited nearly every one of them that the sugar industry there can be increased to at least four times its present dimensions; and, if that is done, there is no possible hope for the beet-sugar industry of this country. It is the death knell of an industry which has already attracted the attention of our people and caused the investment of millions of dollars.

I want to say in this connection that it is the beet-sugar people who are opposing annexation, if there is any lobby here whatever. I have met people who are engaged in the production of beet sugar in Nebraska and in California, and I do not blame those people for doing what they can to protect from ruin a productive vocation in which they have invested large sums of money; but that they are not using money to

influence this contest is proved conclusively by the fact that they have not a newspaper in this city advocating their cause. You say the newspapers are too good. They prove that they

are not.

MR. CAFFERY: I ask the Senator from South Dakota to permit me at this point to suggest to him that the American Sugar Refining Company imports only raw cane sugar, unless it is for the purpose of filling a temporary vacuum in their supply of that article; that they control the markets of the world as to raw sugar, and of course control the price of raw sugar. So little beet sugar is being raised in the United States. They thereby control the price of both. Is it not manifest that if the home production of beet sugar ever attains the proportion of supplying the home demand, the sugar trust will have to loosen its grasp upon the markets of the United States; and that, therefore, the more raw cane sugar they can control and bring into the United States free of duty, the greater will be their grasp upon the home market for their refined article?

MR. PETTIGREW: There is no question about that, Mr. President. On the contrary, it is absolutely true, and they know it, that if the beet-sugar industry grows so as to supply the market of the United States, their business is gone forever, for a beet-sugar factory makes refined sugar.

What does the sugar trust do? It refines raw sugar. Where? Along the coast, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, perhaps in Maryland, and up in Maine. Every one of the refinery companies in those States and all the representatives of those States are in favor of annexation. Did you ever hear of their abandoning the interests of the sugar trust in any contest? No; and they have not done so in this. The sugar trust, residing as it does and having all its stock held in those States, is enabled to command the vote even of those who might be opposed to annexation. What nonsense to talk about the sugar trust being opposed to annexation when every vote which represents their side and their interest is in favor of annexation! I am tired of this talk about the sugar trust's. opposition to annexation.

Mr. President, when I offered an amendment to the last tariff bill striking off the eighth of a cent extra duty on refined sugar, which had been imposed purely and absolutely in the interest of the sugar trust, known by everybody to be a trust, I did not get a vote for my amendment from the States where the sugar trust is located. They knew, and the sugar trust knew, that if the beet-sugar industry of the West supplied the people of this country with sugar their factories would become silent, refining by them will be at an end, and this infamous and odious corrupter of men would be out of business. Beet sugar is what they fear. Cane sugar, as I said before, requires remelting. Beet sugar can be made refined sugar by one continuous process, the beets going in at one end of the factory and coming out refined, white, granulated sugar at the other end of the factory in eighteen hours. That is the process the sugar trust fears. But if this annexation is accomplished, if Hawaiian sugar continues to come in free, it will be the end of the beet-sugar industry in this country.

But you say the Hawaiian Islands will not produce enough to compete with the beet sugar of the United States. This same controversy was up before. In 1876, when this treaty was adopted, some one objected that if we remitted duties to the amount of 2 cents a pound the sugar industry would grow upon these islands enormously. The friends of the treaty in 1876 took this position, and I will read from the majority report on the Hawaiian treaty, March 2, 1876, page 1419, volume 4, part 2, first session Forty-fourth Congress.

When the treaty of 1876 was made, it was objected that it remitted the duty upon Hawaiian sugar, and that this sugar, coming in free of duty, would supplant the production of sugar in this country and result in an enormous loss of revenue to the Treasury. This presentation of the case was urged by the opponents of the treaty of 1876, but without avail, for the reason that the friends of the treaty-those who advocated the measure-made statements which were apparently unanswerable. They predicted that the sugar industry could never grow in the Hawaiian Islands to more than 135,000,000 pounds a year; and that was the wildest dream of any dreamer.

The assurance was that the Hawaiians were producing 23,000,000 pounds at that time and never would produce over 50,000,000 pounds, and therefore the loss of revenue could be only slight, and it would not interfere with the production of sugar from beets in the West.

I am going to read these predictions because the same. statement is now made. Fifty millions, they told us, was all that ever could be produced; and yet last year the islands produced 500,000,000 pounds and shipped it to the United States. Five hundred million pounds is ten times as great as the production predicted by the friends of the treaty when it was made.

I say, then, it is within the bounds of reason to say, after visiting these islands, that the present production of sugar within the next ten years will increase to four times its present amount, and that, instead of 500,000,000 pounds, they will ship to this country 2,000,000,000 pounds; and that means the absolute destruction of the beet-sugar industry in the United States.

Do our laborers favor this treaty? Not a labor organization in the United States favors it. Do our farmers favor this treaty of annexation? I have heard of none. A special interest favors the Hawaiian and American sugar trust, and the President of the United States falls into line because he wishes his name to go down in history as having acquired territory. That is a craze which has seized more than one President. A great President will go down in history anyhow, but a small President can simulate greatness only when his name is transmitted to posterity along with a piece of land added to the area of the country. So great Presidents are not annexationists and little Presidents are.

I am going to read the predictions. This is the majority report of the Committee on the Hawaiian Treaty, March 2, 1876, page 1419, volume 4, part 2, first session Forty-fourth Congress:

1873.

1874.

1875...

Importations of Sugar from Hawaii

Pounds 14,808,000

13,574,000

17,888,000

It is not possible that Hawaiian sugar can ever find its way to the Atlantic States

And yet in 1896, 49,000 tons of Hawaiian sugar found their way direct to the port of New York

The cost of transportation would exclude it; nor can there be fear of any great increase in the production of this sugar, in view of the steadily diminishing population of the islands.

From the time we offered a bonus of 2 cents a pound more than the total cost of sugar, the population of the island began to increase by leaps and bounds, not through the acquisition of American toilers, but by accessions of Asiatic laborers.

It has been said that the United States will surely have this trade, if they do nothing to encourage it.

This is an entire mistake, for production must diminish and trade lessen by the impoverished condition of the people, or they will be compelled to make commercial relations with some other country.

That is the report of the majority of the committee of the House of Representatives in favor of the treaty of 1876, by which sugar was admitted free of duty. They said it was impossible for the industry to increase, and we would lose the trade by an impoverishment of the people if we did not give them this reciprocity treaty, as they called it; and yet under the treaty our trade has fallen off since 1891, the population has increased, and the trade with Asiatic countries has doubled.

Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, who was the chief advocate of this treaty in the Senate in 1876, said, as appears by the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Appendix, page 154, first session Forty-fourth Congress:

The consumption of sugar on the Pacific coast in 1873, or rather on that part of the Pacific coast supplied from San Francisco, Cal., and Portland, Ore., was 75,005,005 pounds, while of this amount but little in excess of one-fifth, or 15,743,146 pounds, came from the Sandwich Islands, although this constituted two-thirds of the whole sugar production of the islands for that year, the whole amount being little in excess of 23,000,000 pounds. So that, even should the amount of sugar consumed on the Pacific coast annually not increase from year to year, which is far wide of the actual fact, it would be necessary that the annual production of the islands should be increased over four