me this letter and give me the facts contained therein. The letter is dated May 18, 1897. The PRESIDING OFFICER (MR. HANSBROUGH in the chair): The Secretary will read as requested. The Secretary read as follows: ALAMEDA SUGAR COMPANY, No. 132 Market Street, San Francisco, May 18, 1897. DEAR SIR: Having been interested during the past ten years in the oldest beet-sugar factory in the country, one which remains independent of the sugar trust, and, in competition therewith, manufactures white sugar and sells direct to the consumer, we beg respectfully to submit a few considerations upon tariff and annexation. Let us dismiss for the moment the many-sided issues with which these questions have been designedly obscured. There are two gigantic sugar trusts. The one has monopolized 70 per cent of our total refining trade; the other, helped by coolie contract labor and the productiveness of its soil, produces the cheapest sugar in the world. These two monopolies soon found a modus vivendi by which to divide the great spoil offered by our National Legislature in granting free entry to Hawaiian sugar. The basis they agreed upon was, say, one-fifth to the American trust and four-fifths to the Hawaiian trust. The spirit of this exemption was that the Pacific coast might enjoy cheaper sugar, while, in point of fact, this intended benefit has inured solely to these two trusts. In further evidence, by their last contract the trust pays the planter "the New York price, less one-fourth cent per pound," which price always includes all duty. Thus in 1896 they divided as follows, viz: To the sugar trust (one-fourth cent on 227,000 tons)......$1,135,000 To the Hawaiian planter (about).... ... 5,000,000 For reasons inscrutable to the public these two sugar trusts are to-day in apparent open hostility. The contract under which they have conspired to fleece the American people expires this year of 1897, and it is stated that the American sugar trust will not renew upon the same terms, but insists upon a greater share in the division of the yearly spoil. This American sugar trust is an association of American citizenswholesale grocers and capitalists. The Hawaiian sugar trust is largely composed of German and of English capital as well as of what was once American capital, but which, having now sought investment beyond our borders and thus escaped our taxation, is no longer American capital, but foreign capital, equally with its German and English associates. The sugar trust of America at least gives employment to some American labor and pays some tax to the American Government; but the Hawaiian sugar trust receives everything, but gives nothing in return. The whole value of their imports from us does not equal one-half the duty yearly remitted by the United States. The sugar trust of America, being a national industry, is entitled to a reasonable protection. The labor which this sugar trust employs in refining only bears to the labor necessary to produce from the ground up the nation's sugar the ratio of 13 to 38. As a labor proposition to America the comparison is as follows, viz: or, reckoning by the known figures of beet-sugar production, these 227,000 tons of Hawaiian cooly-made sugar now yearly displace the best product of 165,000 acres of American land and rob 10,750 American farmers of their most profitable crop. But the American people are to-day awakening to the fact that at last they can be freed from the domination of both of these trusts, and in the promise of a new and rising industry the dignity of American labor sees its coming deliv erance. In 1875 the Hawaiian Islands raised 16,000 tons of sugar; in 1896 it exported 227,000 tons. In 1875 no native sugar was made on the Pacific coast. In 1897 California alone will produce upward of 50,000 tons, while the whole consumption is but 75,000 tons. There will remain, therefore, a scant 25,000 tons to be supplied, and this balance will be more than supplied in 1898 by new factories now in actual construction. A charitable fund is being solicited in San Francisco and has reached the sum of $30,644.41 for building an unnecessary boulevard, in order to provide work for the idle, while we are giving away our birthright, namely, the right to labor for and to supply our own markets. The Hawaiian bureau, organized in San Francisco to influence legislation, sent the State Labor Commissioner, E. L. Fitzgerald, to those islands to report in their favor. The San Francisco Bulletin, in its issue of May 12, has the following, viz: "Labor Commissioner Fitzgerald returned to-day from Honolulu with every assurance that a market for American labor will surely be opened there in the very near future. . . . A very large majority of the planters have pledged me their word that they will employ American laborers as fast as room can be made for them on the several plantations.' Alas! and has America sunk so low? Is our beloved country now compelled to deport her own citizens to beg work from Hawaii and take the place of cooly labor at "$3 per month and found," instead of working for fair wages at home? The population of the eight Hawaiian Islands numbers 109,020. Of these 24,407 are Japanese, 21,616 are Chinese, 15,191 are Portuguese, 39,504 are Hawaiians, leaving a balance of only 8,202, and of these about 3,500 are from America. "This census indicates the class of people who are being favored at the expense of the white farmers of California," and for which heterogeneous population, 2,100 miles away, these sugar monopolists are now seeking annexation in order to accomplish the perpetuation of their privileges. Among disinterested well-informed people in San Francisco there is a well-grounded belief that the recent attempt to create excitement over Japanese naval intervention in Hawaii is only another clever scheme of these would-be Hawaiian sugar annexationists. We are not opposed to a reciprocity treaty so far as to grant them "the most-favored-nation clause," but we do not see how other sugarproducing nations of the first class and their dependencies may not justly feel aggrieved if we grant a total exemption from duty. Is the name Hawaii a fetich, that no duty must be placed upon its product? Were it not better to grant sugar bounty to some other country with whom our trade relations are undeniably reciprocal, rather than to Hawaii, where trade relations are so disproportioned? The people of the United States are practically paying to Hawaiian sugar planters a bounty of $30 per ton, when in 1894 they withdrew the same from their domestic sugar producers and broke faith with their own citizens. The eight leading sugar-producing nations of Europe protect their home markets for their native industry to the extent of from 3.9 to 8.88 cents per pound. The American sugar producer asks barely half this protection from Congress to-day. Let this reasonable protection be granted and no undue favoritism be shown to any Asiatic or other contract-labor product, and a new era will dawn upon America. A more profitable crop than any we now raise will be found for 1,500,000 acres of land and direct employment at good wages created for at least 200,000 American workmen, while allied industries in every walk of life will receive new impetus and upward of $100,000,000 be yearly saved to the national exchequer. Very respectfully, Hon. R. F. PETTIGREW, J. L. HOWARD, President, Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C. MR. PETTIGREW: We had hoped, when the McKinley bill passed in 1890 giving a bounty of 2 cents a pound upon beet sugar, that that industry would grow and flourish in the United States, and that the day was not distant when the States of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and the States west of those States to the Pacific Ocean would be the scene of a great industry, producing $100,000,000 worth of sugar per year. That hope was badly blighted by the enactment of the Wilson law of 1893, which repealed the bounty and placed a slight duty upon sugar, but not sufficient to materially stimulate the industry. Between Between 1890 and 1893 many beet-sugar factories were built in that region, two in Nebraska, and very many more were contemplated. But the Wilson tariff law checked the industry. However, when we passed the Dingley Act last year and increased the duties upon sugar, we hoped this industry would increase, but owing to Hawaiian competition we now see that it is bound to be absolutely ruined and destroyed. We had supposed that the stories they had told us with regard to the limit of production in Hawaii were true. We now find that they were not true. Hawaiian production increased from 1895 to 1897 from 350,000,000 pounds to 500,000,000 pounds. The same increase must supply the country where beet sugar is now produced through all time to come. We believe that increase is imminent, and therefore those who attempt to produce beet sugar in this country must surrender, if the pending resolution passes and the Hawaiian Islands are annexed. There is no getting around it; and every man from sugarproducing Western States who votes for this resolution deliberately, with his eyes open, with the facts undisputed, votes to destroy the beet-sugar industry in his country. There is no getting around it, no chance to avoid it, and no chance to plead ignorance. In 1876, when we adopted this treaty and remitted the duties on Hawaiian sugar, a Senator could escape the charge that he intended to destroy the American sugar industry, because the friends and foes alike of the treaty claimed that it was not possible to produce more than 150,000,000 pounds of sugar in Hawaii, and it was generally conceded that they could not produce over 50,000,000 pounds; but now the facts are undisputed and stare us in the face that the islands have produced 500,000,000 pounds and with every prospect of their being able to produce four times as much; and I believe they can, because I examined those coffee lands in that broad belt from the ocean up the side of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, on the Island of Hawaii, now covered with dense tropical forests, partially planted with coffee, and they will, in my opinion, successfully grow sugar, every acre, and while it is broken land and the fields can not be large, the profit is so enormous, owing to the duty we remitted and the Asiatic labor they employ, that they can afford to cultivate sugar on fields but a few acres in extent, and they can afford to till the soil by hand, and spade it up with a spade, for the remitted duties alone on the crop of the Ewa plantation last year amounted to over $300 an acre, and they produced 8 tons to the acre. No wonder it is profitable, no wonder the industry so grows. I say every Senator who votes for this resolution. votes with his eyes open, intending to destroy the beet-sugar industry of our country. I contend for that industry. I want to see it grow and thrive. I want to see sugar mills built in my State, but none will ever be built there if we annex Hawaii. Mr. James Coffin, who is secretary of the Alameda Sugar Company, wrote me a letter furnishing certain facts with regard to the beet-sugar industry in California. I will send it to the desk and ask to have it read. THE PRESIDING OFFICER: The Secretary will read as requested. The Secretary read as follows: ALAMEDA SUGAR COMPANY, No. 132 Market Street, San Francisco, April 26, 1897. DEAR SIR: The Alameda Sugar Company, an association of 65 American stockholders, with a paid-up capital of $600,000, begs to present the following plea: Last year we manufactured 4,700 tons refined sugar from 3,500 acres, grown by 228 different farmers. This year we |