After deducting capital charges on the basis of the above relatively large estimated current land valuation, the net average profit to the beet-sugar farmers in the United States was as follows:

Net average profit to beet-sugar farmers in United States after allowance has been made for capital charges based on above-estimated current land values

EFFECT OF FALL IN PRICE OF CUBAN SUGAR ON FARM EXPORTS FROM THE UNITED

STATES

There is a direct relation between the purchasing power of Cuban sugar in the United States upon our exports to Cuba. The following table examples this effect as a result of the decline in Cuban sugar prices since 1924.

TABLE 79.—Experience of farmers as to effect of crop of sugar beets on yields ef other subsequent crops, United States, 1922

Number of farmers reporting effect of crop of sugar beets on yield of subsequent crop of

TABLE 80.-Tabulation of farmers' replies to the question, "On your farm what is sugar beets' chief competitive crop?" United States, 1922

TABLE 81.-Tabulation of farmers' replies to the question, "On an average, what crop yields you better net returns than sugar beets?" United States, 1922

Over $1,500,000,000 of American capital have been invested in Cuba, $800,000,000 of which has been absorbed by the sugar industry. The balance is represented by stocks and bonds of railroads, public utilities, and commercial and industrial establishments which are largely dependent on the sugar industry for their own existence.

The investment in the sugar industry of the United States and its insular possessions has been estimated by Dr. Philip G. Wright to be $733,000,000, of which only $447,000,000 are in the United States. The American investment in the Philippines constitutes but a small part of the total, the industry being owned mainly by Spainards and Filipinos.

While the domestic industry, mainly insular, has steadily expanded under the stimulus of the existing tariff, the market value of American investments in Cuba has undergone a tremendous decline.

Are we to further sacrifice one group of American investors in order to enrich another? That there are a few extra-marginal domestic producers who can not long survive under prevailing price conditions, no one familiar with the industry can deny; that the great bulk of the industry is enjoying prosperity is amply evidenced by the record of earnings and dividends of domestic sugar companies and by the continued expansion of the industry.

Investment in the sugar industry in the several regions of domestic sugar production

Data from Cuban Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Commercial and Financial Chronicle, January 21, 1928.

APPENDIX 40

CHARACTER OF LABOR IN THE DOMESTIC SUGAR INDUSTRY

There is little difference in the type of labor employed in the several regions of domestic sugar production so far as standards of living are concerned. The Mexican peon who predominates in the continental beet-sugar industry and the negro in the Louisiana cane section are on a parity with the Malayans of the Philippines, the Japanese of Hawaii and the half-caste natives of Porto Rico.

According to the Tariff Commission there were 100,000 adult laborers, or å working force of adults and children equivalent to that number, employed in the cultivation and harvesting of the 1926 sugar-beet crop. Nearly 79,000 of this number were contract laborers, the remainder being farmers, members of their families and hired labor.

Testimony before the House Committee on Immigration shows conclusively that the great majority of laborers engaged in the production of sugar beets are foreigners, chiefly Mexicans, who migrate to the beet fields for the summer work. returning to Mexico after the completion of the harvest.

The labor superintendent of the American Beet Sugar Co. testified as follows: "The class of labor used in the beet fields of which I speak (Iowa and Minnesota) is composed of German-Russians, Bohemians, Belgians, Hungarians, and Mexicans. The percentage of this labor is divided into approximately 40 per cent white and 60 per cent Mexican. Present industrial conditions are such that this white labor has been absorbed, and we are now dependent upon Mexican farm labor as the only available kind to be secured." Congressman Edward T. Taylor, of Colorado, stated that "our American labor does not do this kind of work. I never in my life have known of any member of organized labor going into a sugar-beet field. The American laboring people will not get down on their hands and knees in the dirt and pull weeds and thin these beets and break their backs doing that kind of work."

*

The vice president of the Mountain States Beet Growers' Association testified as follows:

* * *

"I want to say to you that there is not a white man of any intelligence in our country that will work an acre of beets. I do not want to see the condition arise again when white men who are reared and educated in our schools have got to bend their backs and skin their fingers to pull those little beets."

The payment made to these contract laborers in the beet fields amounts to $23 per acre. As the season lasts for 52 months and the average area culti vated by one man amounts to 82 acres, the net return to the laborer is about $1.16 per 12-hour day, out of which he must provide for himself during the period and pay his transportation back to Texas or Mexico at the close of the

season.

A study made by the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor showed that deplorable conditions existed among the laborers in the sugar-beet fields. Unsanitary and crowded shacks built of flimsy material and a considerable amount of ill health and disease and retardation in schooling was found among the children of these workers. It has been estimated that in Colorado over 6,000 children are annually employed in the beet fields.2

1 Cost of Producing Sugar Beets, Part X, p. 16.

"Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in the Beet Fields of Colorado and Michigan," Children's Bureau, Publication No. 113.

Character of labor employed in handwork on sugar beets, 1926

Percentage of each type of labor employed in handwork, 1922

Labor costs in the production of sugar beets in the United States

Data from "Cost of Producing Sugar Beets," Part X, p. 75, U. S. Tariff Commission.

Based on data from Willett & Gray and Monthly Summary of Foreign Conmerce of the United States.

NOTE.-Official figures on imports of raw sugar from the insular possessions and Willett & Gray's figures of consumption for beet and Louisiana cane sugar have been multiplied by the appropriate tariff rates.

STATEMENT OF WALTER C. HUGHES, CHICAGO, ILL., REPRESENT.

ING THE NATIONAL CONFECTIONERS' ASSOCIATION

Mr. HUGHES. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I represent the candy industry. The National Confectioners' Association. of which I am secretary, in its active membership list includes 500 candy manufacturers, whose sales amount to $350,000,000 annually. The sales of the entire industry will amount to $375,000,000 per year.

The sugar usage of the members amounts to about 350,000 tons annually. The sugar usage of the entire industry amounts to 390,000 tons annually.

The present import duty on raw sugar imposes a tax on the indus try of approximately $15,000,000 annually. That is about 4 per cent on our invested capital. If the import duty is increased one-half cent, that would increase the tax on the industry $4,000,000, which. with the present duty, would make about 5 per cent on the capital

invested.

1 January-October.