ORIGIN OF THE WHITE HOUSE PREJUDICE

The prejudice which the President had against the Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry was most pronounced. It arose early in his administration when he was urging Congress to pass the law remitting part of the duties on imported sugar coming into this country from Cuba. I have no desire to criticize the President for his attitude in this matter. At that time the planter and manufacturer of sugar in Cuba scarcely got a cent a pound on his product. All the nations of Europe producing beet sugar were paying large bounties on beet sugar when it was exported. The result was that practically all the sugar consumed by Great Britain, which was one of the great sugar consuming countries of the world was cheapened by bounties paid by France, Germany, Belgium, Russia and Austria on exported beet sugar. Sugar was so cheap in London that the makers of cane sugar in the West Indies had lost the greater part of their trade. At the time (1902) the United States was considering the subject of a rebate of import duties on sugar to Cuban planters a congress called by beet-sugar producing countries in Europe was sitting in Brussels considering the question of abolishing export duties on beet sugar. Sereno E. Payne of New York was chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means before which the question of rebate on Cuban sugar was under consideration. I was very much embarrassed on receiving a summons to appear before that committee. I had no sympathy with the proposed legislation. I had devoted many years of study to the domestic sugar problem, in investigating the possibilities of extending our domestic production from sorghum, sugar beets and sugar cane. I was naturally a high protectionist on sugars imported from abroad. I went to the Secretary of Agriculture and explained to him that I was opposed to this legislation but that I did not want to appear in opposition to the President's plan. I asked him to communicate with Chairman Payne and have him withdraw the summons. The Secretary said:

I am just as much opposed to this legislation as you are but being a member of the President's cabinet I can not say anything; I think the committee ought to know the truth about this matter. (Quoted from memory.)

I replied that I also thought they ought to know the truth, but that I didn't see any difference between his telling them the truth and 1, who was only one of his assistants. The result was, however, that I had to appear before the committee. I was two days in giving them the data which to my mind clearly disclosed that the trouble in Cuba was not due to our import tax, but to the giving of bounties in Europe on exported beet sugar. I quote from the hearings of the Ways and Means Committee.

"It follows as a logical conclusion, therefore, that the people who come to this committee for relief from the low price of sugar should strike at the true cause, not the false one, of the evil of which they complain. * * * Their cause should be pleaded in the Parliaments of Europe, not in that of America; their plaints should go before the Reichstadt, Bundesrath, and the Corps Legslatif, and not before the American Congress. The place to plead their cause is before the Congress of Brussels, not before the Ways and Means Committee of the Congress of the United States. "