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
farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its