A SONG ABOUT SUGAR

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 140, 11 December 1930, Page 8

A SONG ABOUT SUGAR

A London cablegram compares Britain's subsidies to British beet witli Britain's preference to Australian sugar, and states that the annual value of the subsidies to the British beet-growers is much greater than is the annual value of the British preference to the Australian sugar importers. The Australians can hardly put the blame for this on Mr. 'Snowden, who would probably call down a plague on both their houses. It is not his. fault if the British beet-grow-ers are better able than tlie/ Australians to take advantage of a principle that is obnoxious to him whether applied to beet or to cane, and which is retained solely because of the incapacity of a minority Government to live up to full free-trade. According to the comments of the chairman of the Colonial Sugar Company on that company's latest balance-sheet, Australia's exported sugar is "netting only half the cost of production"; and the Italians who might bring down sugar production costs, while maintaining a white standard, are not allowed to enter.. Mr. Snowden's repeated comparison of under-populat-ed Australia with over-populated India shows that he is looking for trade with the poorer multitudes oversea rather than with the richer minorities that restrict immigrants and births. Standing at the two extremes of tariffism and no-tariffism, Labour leaders like Messrs. Scullin and Snowden have little in common save their initial letters, and no bridging of the gap seems lo be possible unless a new movement in British Labour leaves the Chancellor of the Exchequer high and dry