This shut out from England the product of Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, northern France and Russia and took the
farmers from their fields. The battle lines of the Central Powers
enclosed the land which used to grow a third of the world's supply of
sugar. In 1913 the beet and the cane each supplied about nine million
tons of sugar. In 1917 the output of cane sugar was 11,200,000 and of
beet sugar 5,300,000 tons. Consequently the Old World had to draw upon
the New. Cuba, on which the United States used to depend for half its
sugar supply, sent over 700,000 tons of raw sugar to England in 1916.
The United States sent as much more refined sugar. The lack of shipping
interfered with our getting sugar from our tropical dependencies,
Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines. The homegrown beets give us only
a fifth and the cane of Louisiana and Texas only a fifteenth of the
sugar we need. As a result we were obliged to file a claim in advance to
get a pound of sugar from the corner grocery and then we were apt to be
put off with rock candy, muscovado or honey.
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