CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.- COPYRIGHT.]

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1904, Page 5

CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.- COPYRIGHT.]

« THE PRICE OF SUGAR. m STATEMENT BY MR. CHAMBERLAIN. INTERVIEW WITH CONFECTIONERS. [press association.] LONDON, sth December. Mr. Chamberlain, replying to the coinplaints of Birmingham confectioners — who urged the repeal of the Sugar Bounties Convention, on the ground that it had raised the price of svgar — declared that an important item in his policy wac a reduction of the duties on tea and sugar* and a transfer of the impost to other articles of general consumption. It was remarkable that if the high price of sugar was ao' to the tax, that the result had only been manifested long after the imposition of the tax. The sudden and serious fluctuations were really entirely due to changes in the relation of supply and demand. The remedy lay in increasing the sources of supply. Ifc was, therefore, essential to remove artificial hindrances to production. In a letter to the London Spectator, Mr. G. H. I'erris, of the Cobden Club, supplies a table of the adva-aca in the price oi fiugai from July, 1902, four months after the signing oi the Convention, and its price in August of the preseflt year. "From these tables it will be seen," he says, "thai sajve for a short pertod iasi yea-r, marked: by Rwseian dumping, the rise ban been steady end continuous, and that it now air.udHts to over 4s per esrt. h# the cast oi Ger-man-A etctrian 38 per cenrt. M:g;<:, aud nearly 5s in granulated Ms^ar, or 73 per cenl. in one case and b& per cent, in the other — one third of the rise having occurred in the past year." Air. Ferris then goes on to point out that a rise of 4a on the quantity imported by Great Britain laet year will mean a loss of £6,200,000. A dozen firms of refiners may have received some stimulus (by the abolition of bounties on refined sugars), and the West Indies have sent Great Britaua during the past six months 165,863cwt wore thiin in the s:vme period of last year — a. gain of about £67,000 a year. "Such," he says, "are the meagre rewards of fiscal retaliation." On the other hand, France, Germany, and Austria, and other sugar producing countries, have gained. Prices have fallen with them more considerably than they have risen in Great Britain, with the conse". quence that while British augar-making trades have had a disastrous year, aad consumption has been reduced, it has risen enormously on the Continent. Tht convention has produced a kind of stability in prices — the stability of a steady rise, and the higher level is likely to be maintained.