The English at home, especially the
marmalade-makers, at first rejoiced at the idea of getting sugar for
less than cost at the expense of her continental rivals. But the
suffering colonies took another view of the situation. In 1888 a
conference of the powers called at London agreed to stop competing by
the pernicious practice of export bounties, but France and the United
States refused to enter, so the agreement fell through. Another
conference ten years later likewise failed, but when the parvenu beet
sugar ventured to invade the historic home of the cane the limit of
toleration had been reached. The Council of India put on countervailing
duties to protect their homegrown cane from the bounty-fed beet. This
forced the calling of a convention at Brussels in 1903 "to equalize the
conditions of competition between beet sugar and cane sugar of the
various countries," at which the powers agreed to a mutual suppression
of bounties. Beet sugar then divided the world's market equally with
cane sugar and the two rivals stayed substantially neck and neck until
the Great War came.
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