is advised, these pipe blocks were put upon the free list, and since that they have been coming in from foreign countries cheaper than our people could get them out of the mountains, haul them to the railroad, and ship them. If there is an infant industry in the United States which needs a little protection, and which would benefit the working man and farmer, it is this pipe-block business. I would suggest that it would be well for you to discuss this question with Mr. W. P. Brownlow, as it affects his district as well as yours. Yours, very truly, W. E. MINGEA. DECEMBER 22, 1908. Messrs. R. E. Donnelly, J. Walter Wright, E. E. Butler, Mountain City, Tenn.; B. W. Wills, Nat Wills, Silver Lake, Tenn.; G. H. Robinson, Laurel Bloomery, Tenn.; G. Frank Robinson, A. A. Mock, S. L. Mock, J. A. Dowler, D. E. Pennington, Damascus, Va.; J. C. Lewis, Taylors Valley, Va.; Gentry Brothers, Park, Va.; W. F. Blevins, Green Cove, Va.; Hassinger Lumber Company, Konnarock, Va. GENTLEMEN: Ten years ago there was a considerable business in your country getting out ivy roots for pipe blocks. I am told that this was killed by the Wilson bill taking off the tariff on imported pipe blocks and that when the Dingley tariff was established the duty was not replaced on pipe blocks. I do not know as to the correctness of these details, but I do know the business has been killed. The business in ivy roots gave employment to a good many people and distributed in the aggregate a considerable amount of money. I have taken up the matter with the Hon. Bascom Slemp, Member of Congress of the Ninth Virginia District, and Hon. W. P. Brownlow, of the First Tennessee District, asking them to use their efforts to have the tariff put upon imported pipe blocks so as to revive the industry in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee. I would recommend that you write to these two Members of Congress along the same line and that you get other parties in your section to write to them also. Yours, truly, W. E. MINGEA. SCHEDULE E SUGAR, MOLASSES, AND MANUFAC TURES OF. SUGAR. [Paragraph 209.] STATEMENT OF D. D. COLCOCK, OF NEW ORLEANS, LA., REPRESENTING THE NEW ORLEANS SUGAR EXCHANGE. MONDAY, November 16, 1908. Mr. COLCOCK. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: We learned through the press dispatches that it was the desire of this committee to hear only one man for each industry, if it were possible to do so. For that reason I have been sent here as the spokesman for the cane sugar industry of Louisiana. We were also informed that your chairman had said that this hearing was to "cover the entire sugar question." Both of these facts became known to me only on the 9th instant, and found me, as secretary of our sugar exchange, quite busy, as we are now at the height of our selling season. If, therefore, I prove a poor representative, I hope you will set it down rather to my being suddenly called on, than to my inability to come up to your requirements, for I know of no man who can cover the entire sugar question" without special preparation. As nearly as I can approximate, five separate questions are involved: 1. The schedule proper; 66 2. The administration section of the law; 3. The propriety of maximum and minimum rates of duty in this particular schedule; 4. The reciprocity concession to Cuba; and 5. The recommendation of ex-Secretary Taft as to Philippine concessions. Schedule E of the tariff law of July 24, 1897, in the framing of which I had my full share, was satisfactory to the consumer as well as to the producer, to the importer, and to the refiner; and was practically what this committee sent over to the Senate just after the extra session was convened. We had been living from 1883 to 1890 under a higher rate of duty, but the bounties given on beet sugar exported from the European continental states offset the difference, and the countervailing duties provided for in section 5 stopped that drain. The duty was specific, the polariscope test effectual, and the extension of the reciprocity agreement with the Hawaiian Islands only affected about 180,000 tons of sugar, which we were assured was 3251 the maximum possible production for export. The conditions at that time were satisfactory and would be now, but modifications have been effected without the enactment of a general tariff law. The Hawaiian Islands having lost their independence, became the beneficiaries of the law equally with ourselves, and, wonderful to relate, have doubled and more than doubled their shipments to the mainland. Then, as a result of the Spanish war, Porto Rico came into our arms; her sugar no longer paid duty, and her export to the United States has been multiplied by five. Another result was our getting so mixed up with an Asiatic archipelago that her product was granted a reduction of 25 per cent of the Dingley rate but that is another story. Of our increased consumption of 600,000 tons, 370,000 have been therefore duty free. As if the schedule had not been sufficiently defaced, in 1903 Cuba got her 20 per cent off, practically an admission of 340,000 tons duty free. It is fair, therefore, to say that our entire increase of consumption has been of free sugar. The world's production has more than kept pace in the interval with the increased consumption, and the natural consequence has been a lower range of values. Col. James D. Hill told you in 1902 that it cost the Louisiana planter 3 cents per pound to produce 96-test sugar. To-day it is quoted 3 cents on the New Orleans market. Let us now pass to the second question, the administrative section of the law. On June 7, 1897, at this committee's instance, the House passed H. R. 379, fixing 92 per cent of the rate of duty on sugar as the basis for reciprocity conventions that is, a concession of 8 per cent should be made; eventually this section lumped up all the reciprocity articles making a maximum of 20 per cent; in 1903 the maximum (20 per cent) was granted Cuba up to December 27, 1908. We had defeated Cuban reciprocity the year before, but became reconciled to it because the treaty stipulated that no foreign sugar should be imported which paid less than the full Dingley rates during the life of the treaty. We now hear that some of our Cuban friends are asking for a larger concession, which would require a change in the administrative section of the law. We would much prefer that the treaty be abrogated. Reciprocity has somehow become a fad with tariff revisionists. To make a way for it we hear of propositions to establish maximum and minimum rates, which bring us to question 3. I fail to find sugar accepted by the European continental states as an article which lends itself to such a purpose. Under the Brussels Convention a surtax was placed on sugar and the duty so increased effectually bars sugar out. Why, then, should this article be made the basis for reciprocity agreements in the United States? I don't know enough about it to argue the case, but until it be settled I don't see how you can expect to consider the question of establishing anything but the present rate as the minimum and adding thereto such an increment as shall make it an object for other countries to offer us freer entry of our products into their territory; otherwise we shall resist any provision of the sort. Question 4, as to reciprocity with Cuba, comes next: The time limit expires December 27. What you will recommend we do not know, but we do know that the Cuban is not the chief beneficiary of the conces |