country west of the Mississippi. In all
ages ridicule has been the chief weapon of conservatism. If you want to
know what line human progress will take in the future read the funny
papers of today and see what they are fighting. The satire of every
century from Aristophanes to the latest vaudeville has been directed
against those who are trying to make the world wiser or better, against
the teacher and the preacher, the scientist and the reformer.

In spite of the ridicule showered upon it the despised beet year by year
gained in sweetness of heart. The percentage of sugar rose from six to
eighteen and by improved methods of extraction became finally as pure
and palatable as the sugar of the cane. An acre of German beets produces
more sugar than an acre of Louisiana cane. Continental Europe waxed
wealthy while the British West Indies sank into decay. As the beets of
Europe became sweeter the population of the islands became blacker.
Before the war England was paying out $125,000,000 for sugar, and more
than two-thirds of this money was going to Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Fostered by scientific study, protected by tariff duties, and stimulated
by export bounties, the beet sugar industry became one of the financial
forces of the world. The English at home, especially the
marmalade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally with
cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
the Great War came. This shut out from England the product of Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the