Knowledge that Transforms

THE phenomenal growth of the beet-sugar industry in the United States and the importance given to it in late congressional considerations, together with the recent action of France in so modifying her laws as to remove 6o per' cent. of the customs and internal-revenue tax on sugar, and the relation which this is likely to have upon the readjustment of the world's sugar supply, make a consideration of the desirability of the United States producing her own sugar especially pertinent at this time. This action of France, and. the more recent utterance of the Berlin Conference, classifying Russian sugar as "bounty-fed," and fully sustaining Secretary of the Treasury Shaw in his recent contention with the Russian government over the same point, has probably sounded the death-knell of bounty-fed sugar, for we may reasonably expect that an action similar to that of France will be taken by the other states of continental Europe. Should this course be followed in Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, it is inevitable that there will be an entire readjustment of the world's sugar conditions. The very natural question is, then: What may be the effect on this promising new industry of the United States? Our people have become so accustomed to the term "cane sugars" that they do not realize that within the last few years the source of the world's supply has been largely shifted from cane to the beet plant. In i853 the world's sugar supply was I,48i,ooo long tons, of which 304,000 tons is accredited to the beet, or about

Journal Article Precedents for Defining Capital Get access Irving Fisher Irving Fisher Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 18, Issue 3, May 1904, Pages 386–408, https://doi.org/10.2307/1884076 Published: 01 May 1904

discrepancy was found in the returns for every principal agri? cultural crop in the United States. It, moreover, has been pointed out that the student is apparently compelled to believe in the superior accuracy of the census figures as compared with those of the Department of Agriculture, unless satisfactory evidence going to discredit the work of the census office, and to throw unexpected shadows upon its methods, can ?>e produced. We have seen, too, that during the months immediately suc? ceeding the publication of the reports of the twelfth census, friends of the Agricultural Department sought to cast reflections upon the work of the census. That the Agricultural Department should feel annoyed at the errors in its statistics which seemed to be revealed with the