THE HOLDING MOVEMENT IN AGRICULTURE 275 
Third, the promise that the paper should be retired when the 
particular need for it had passed has not been kept. Coffee 
valorization has been a most fruitful source of inflation, with the 
result that it is directly responsible for the growing demoraliza- 
tion of Brazilian industry and the chief obstacle in the way of 
improvement in the Brazilian exchange situation. This unstable 
exchange has brought ruin and distress to all the other industries 
in Sao Paulo’ but their just protests against the intolerable 
situation created by the selfish demands of a single industry 
have fallen on deaf ears; for the Government has found itself 
more and more at the beck and call of a cabal of selfish and 
rapacious growers who persistently demand higher prices for their 
product but make no attempt to restrict their production. 
While, on the surface of things, the Brazilian volarization seems 
to have been successful in that up to this time it has brought 
higher prices to growers, even a little investigation below the 
surface reveals the fact that this slight filip to price has been 
secured at an awful cost. To the advocates of the Holding 
Movement in the United States, Brazilian coffee valorization 
should be, not a light house marking the entrance to a safe 
harbor, but a whistling buoy marking a dangerous reef. 
The War brought unprecedented prosperity to the Cuban sugar 
planters, but, as in the case of other industries, the subsequent 
deflation brought about a erisis. During the War sugar was 
subject to much regulation, as regards both consumption and 
prices. As a result, conditions in the industry became highly 
artificial, and the collapse, therefore, was most profound. By 
the late autumn of 1920 the price of Cuban raw sugar had fallen 
to an almost unprecedented level. In an attempt to meet the 
crisis the Cuban Sugar Commission was formed. This Com- 
mission declared that its purpose was the stabilization of raw 
sugar prices. It immediately indicated what it meant by stabili- 
zation by advancing the price of raw sugar about a cent a pound. 
It announced that this new price should be the minimum export 
price and notified the New York Exchange that trading in sugar 
"That the coffee planters themselves do not always escape the evil 
consequences of valorization, is shown by a statement from a correspond- 
ent who had intimately studied the situation of the planters. He says, 
‘As to the Defense Politicians, people are now beginning to realize that 
instead of their being a help their policies have only created a lot of 
misery in that many planters have fallen into the hands of usurers. (Ibid., 
Dec., 1926, p. 1598.)