TUB PRICE OF SUGAR.

Evening Star, Issue 12399, 12 January 1905, Page 1

TUB PRICE OF SUGAR.

“ Thb abnormally high price of sugar, which “to-day is costing £2l per ton, as against “£lO to £l2, the normal price before the “ tax and the Convention,” to quote from a communication from the head of one of the largest confectionery establishments in England, continues to cause acute distress in the industries dependent upon cheap sugar, and to inflict hardship in many thousands of English households, where every penny piece is a consideration. So far the New Zealand consumer has practically escaped this additional straw to the burden which he as a family man is called upon to bear, but from present indications he pnTl hardly hope to do so much longer. The price of sugar to the local retailer has advanced within the last three months £2 10s a ton, or an increase of £d a pound. The retailer has not, however, yet passed this extra cost on to his customers, though as a matter of simple business he cannot be expected to enact the role of a philanthropist for any length of time. Pil-garlic, as usual, will have to pay. Sugar has seldom been anything else than an article of prime necessity, out of which the retailer has apparently been content to make a fraction over the cost of the string he uses and the paper bag in which he puts it up. But with no sign of a reduction in the wholesale price, and with an appreciable loss on every package sold, the date at Which the retail cost will advance cannot long be avoided. The fact is regrettable, but, unfortunately, the causes are not within our own control, importer, retailer, and consumer being alike helpless. It will be particularly unwelcome to the ordinary wage-earner that this essential article of domestic economy should cost more at this stage in our history. The cost of living during the past five or six years has advanced so persistently and appreciably that no increase in wages has been able to overtake it. Row far these readjustments of price are inevitable, how far they are artificial, and how far awards in the Arbitration Court have been made to cover a multitude of sins in this relation are points on which we have various and diverse opinions. To discuss them may be interesting, and not without advantage to economic primers, but arguments on laws of average and compensation and cycles of trade fluctuations are of nmn)l utility to plain John Smith, who has a wife and family to support, and has lost his job through the rise in the price of sugar. To speak as politicians, Boards of Trade, and statisticians do speak about the average of prices spread over a period of years, or to contrast the price of sugar or any other staple commodity in the years 1890-1900 with what it may be in the years 1900-1910 is, •as a Home correspondent points out, “trifling.” In fact it is worse than trifling it is cruel. There is, as the same writer affirms, no average price cither for the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil, or for the manufacturer with his tens of thousands of pounds invested. The price of such necessities as flour or sugar is to these its price. to-day, not its average spread over a decade. If the individual cannot pay . the figure asked he must go without ; if the manufacturer cannot carry on his business with his raw materials purchased at current rates he must close down. Neither the one nor the other can wait ten years, although the next generation, when its public men study the prices of our earlier and, of course, to them happier age, will doubtless write eloquent articles and deliver glowing speeches to envious audiences proving, from statistics spread over an average of ten years, how exceedingly well off and prosperous those other fellows were. On the direct causes of the “ abnormal rise ” in the price of sugar in Great Britain opinions differ. The confectionery factories and workers interested have no hesitation in holding that the tax placed upon sugar during the Boer War and Britain’s adherence to the Brussels Sugar Convention are almost solely responsible for the crisis. On the other hand, the chairman and secretary of the West India Committee maintain that the Convention has. proved a blessing, in that it has checked the importation of bounty-fed sugar; in other words, that those countries in which bounties were paid were producing sugar at a loss of £3 per ton, and that had this system continued, non-bounty-paying countries would have been forced out of the market—ergo, the price must have risen. Per contra, the users of sugar argue that the terms of the Convention close British ports to the exports of countries from which large supplies were formerly obtained. Were the question one purely between experts, it would, as we have said, possess an academic if not a practical interest. On this aspect both instruction and amusement might be gained by onlookers. If there were nothing more, we could smile at the repartee and applaud the points. When the secretary of the West India Cohunittee reminds an indignant president of a.large confectionery works that his company’s scrip is quoted at a premium of 200 per cent, and that a dividend of 37 £ per cent, was paid in 1903, we might then say that the gentleman doth protest too much. But when we are faced with what Mr Gradgrind termed “facts”—e.g., the retail price of sugar to the British consumer has advanced Id per lb; the price per hundredweight in July, 1902 was 6s, and to-day is 14s 4d; many firms have closed down or been forced into liquidation, and thousands of men and women have been thrown out of employment; when we meet with statement* of this nature we are tolerably certain that the West India Committee have not found the key to the problem, and that the industries concerned have made out a strong case of post hoc, etc., as far at,least as it is applicable to the War tax, the Convention, and the prevailing high price of sugar.