manufacture sugar themselves, as Spain and Italy do, while our home consumption is arrested by fiscal regulations, what will then become of our sugar manufacturers and beetroot growers?

VII.

Value of sugar exports compared with the whole of French exports.

A Comparison between the value of the exports of raw native, refined, and pieces, and the total value of exported French merchandise.

One thousand fr. is the unit for the following calculations :

Commerce Spécial.

Therefore while in 1900 we exported 159 million fr. worth of sugar, we paid 103 millions in bounties, rebates, and détaxes, i.e., 61 per cent! It would not be inaccurate to say that out of our own pocket we give 61 fr. to every 100 fr. which is paid by Englishmen who are kind enough to eat our sugar. In 1899, the percentage was still higher, as we paid 86,781,000 fr. worth of bounties, détaxes, and rebates (refer to pp. 49, 50), and only exported about 102 millions. We had therefore to pay nearly 85 per cent.

This is the price, then, we have to give for keeping in existence an industry which after all, and in spite of all favours and privileges, has never, since 1879, amounted to 4 per cent. of the whole exports of our special trade.

When the question of suppressing the bounties comes before our Parliament, it will be well for deputies and senators to bear in mind that while the exports of all other French industries amount proportionally to more than 96 per cent., the sugar manufacturers export less than 4 per cent., in spite of manufacturing rebates and in spite of direct export bounties.

IV

THE PROBLEM OF THE DAY.

I.

Useless Manifestations.

WE are aware that it is said: "We admit that five departments only are interested in the beet sugar production, that the area cultivated for beetroot is only 2 per cent. of that cultivated for grain, that the wages of the workers have not been improved by the bounty system, nor their number increased, that the importance of the sugar industry and beet cultivation does not justify all the noise which is made about them, or the worry they give to public men. We will concede all this. But is that a reason for murdering the industry? And you will murder it if you alter the law of 1884.'

Such is the argument of the sugar manufacturer and the beetroot grower, who will very likely add a more or less scornful sneer at the address of economists. Let us begin, by stating that we do not wish to murder anybody or anything, if indeed one can murder something. We do not even desire to take the initiative for a modification of the present régime on account of our economic convictions. We merely argue from facts which neither sugar manufacturers, nor beetroot growers, nor economists, nor free traders, can deny.

For a long time sugar manufacturers and beetroot growers refused to consider the possibility of countervailing duties. They still possess that kind of fatalism

which convinces them that they have nothing to fear.

But M. Dureau, the very able editor of the Journal des Fabricants de Sucre, has warned his patrons and his readers against so dangerous a sense of security. More than once he told them that as French sugars imported into England were only a small part of her total sugar imports, the French article might easily be replaced there by other beet or cane sugar-producing countries. M. Dureau said, in the issue of his journal of the 28th of December, 1899, in which was reproduced an extract of le Siecle's account of the banquet given in London by the Chamber of Commerce on the 23rd of December:

In principle we agree with M. Guyot when he says that the bounty system is ridiculous, and that it ought to be totally abolished, in the interest of producers and consumers as well. It is, no doubt, necessary to husband the means which may increase consumption, and there again we agree with M. Guyot. We have said more than once in these columns, and we again repeat: the most practical of those means, and the most sensible solution, is to suppress or reduce home consumption duties. But at the same time bounties will have to be suppressed or reduced; and it is on this point that manufacturers make some reservations.

They make reservations! It is their right to do so; but we should like to know what practical results their reservations will produce.

At a meeting of the "Société des Agriculteurs de France," held on November 28th, 1900, after M. Plichon's report had been read, the following resolution was carried unanimously :

Whereas French agriculture has been materially fostered by the legislation on sugar established by the laws of 1884 and 1897, by which the Sugar industry, which was in a perilous condition before 1884, has been revived, by which beetroot cultivation, and through this wheat and meat production has been developed, by which large outlets have been opened for cattle bred in the Centre and West of France, by which more employment and better wages have been obtained by agricultural labourers in summer and by the working classes of the