vernment
formerly prepared sixteen samples put up in glass flasks and sealed.
These samples varied in color according to the amount of pure sugar
contained. The pure solution was known in commerce as No. 16 Dutch
standard, and this was generally taken all over the world as the
standard of pure sugar. Within recent years the polariscope, an optical
instrument that determines the percentage of sugar by means of polarized
light, has largely replaced the Dutch standard.

The refineries, as a rule, are built with reference to a minimum
handling and transportation of the raw product. The cane-sugar
refineries are mainly at the great seaports, where the raw sugar does
not pay railway transportation. The beet-sugar refineries are in the
midst of the beet-growing districts. So nearly perfect and economically
managed are these processes, that raw sugar imported from Europe or
from the West Indies, at a cost of from two and a quarter to two and a
half cents per pound, is refined and sold at retail at about five cents.

The margin of profit is so very close, however, that in the United
States, as well as most European states, the sugar industry is protected
by government enactments. In the United States imported raw sugar pays a
tariff in order to protect the cane-sugar industry of the Gulf coast and
the beet-sugar grower of the Western States. The duty at the close of
the nineteenth century was about 1.66 cents per pound; or, if the sugar
came from a foreign country paying a bounty on sugar exported, an
additional countervailing duty equal to the bounty was also charged.

In the various states of western Europe the beet-sugar industry is
governed by a cartel or agreement among the states, which makes the
whole business a gigantic combination arrayed against the tropical sugar
interests. In general, the government of each state pays a bounty on
every pound of beet-sugar exported. The real effect of the export bounty
is about the same as the imposition of a tax on the sugar purchased for
consumption at home.

Two-thirds of the entire sugar product are made from the beet, at an
average cost of about 2.5 cents a pound. In the tropical islands the
yield of cane-sugar per acre is about double that of beet-sugar and it
is produced for about five dollars less per ton. This difference is in
part offset by the fact that the raw cane-sugar must pay transportation
for a long distance to the place of consumption, and in part by the
governm