Economic essays

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: The holding movement in agriculture / Jesse E. Pope

Collection:: Economics Books

THE HOLDING MOVEMENT IN AGRICULTURE 277 sugar scarcity and that the 1926-27 sugar crop will fall far below consumption requirements. (Lamborn & Co., in the Wall Street Journal, February 23, 1927.) But the more important phase of the situation from the stand- point of Cuba is, that her unaided attempt to raise the price of her product by creating a scarcity value may work irreparable damage to her leading industry. Unlike coffee, sugar production, if prices are high enough, can be quickly expanded; and when once the industry is established in new fields, it tends to become permanent. At the present moment there is a widespread move- ment to expand production where the industry is now established or to take it up in countries where sugar has been produced not at all or only in small quantities. For years beet sugar has been a formidable rival of cane sugar and its competition has often brought disaster to cane sugar producers. In almost every country in Europe, including Denmark and the Irish Free State, beet sugar production is receiving serious attention. The United States is also expanding its acreage and it has an almost unlimited area favorable for the raising of sugar beets. And tropical lands are planning increased cane plantings. Once these new sources of supply become established, they will contend sharply to maintain their position. No country in the world can produce sugar cheaper than Cuba; it is the natural home of cane; the labor supply is good and capital has not been lacking. Cuba of all producers can least afford to create competition by an appeal to scarcity value. It is notorious that her productive methods are antiquated and costly. Her salvation lies in making them efficient and relatively cheap. By pursuing such a policy, instead of narrowing her market she will widen it and instead of inviting new competitors she will, by virtue of her superior productive position, keep new ones from entering the field. The correctness of this position has just been strikingly borne out by a statement in our financial journals to the effect that our American alcohol producers, irritated by the high price for Cuban molasses—their raw material—are drawing their supplies from Europe at a price materially below that which those in control of the Cuban supply are willing to accept. In 1912 the raisin growers of California formed a cooperative marketing association, with a view to improving the situation in

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