the sugar trade: NYC and Cuba
One hundred years ago today … Sugar prices, dropping throughout the week, reached a new low, six cents per pound.
New York Times, 12 November 1920, p. 29. The New York Times.
The sugar trade, many of our readers will know, has a long history intertwining with US economic imperialism, particularly in the Caribbean, particularly relating to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
At the time of the price drop, the US banks were considering huge loans to Cuban sugar producers, amid accusations of profiteering. The World editorialized against such loans.
The loans would go through, with devastating results for the Cuban companies. Brain Politt writes that in 1920:
[T]he focus of US interests shifted from the creation of new productive capacity to the absorption of a substantial number of established Cuban sugar enterprises. Large loans from US banks had financed Cuban efforts to profit from a short-lived speculative boom in world sugar prices in 1920. When it collapsed, the same banks took over defaulting Cuban producers and financiers. Moreover, many large US sugar companies in Cuba were vertically integrated with their continental processing industries, giving them a direct low-cost access to a US market denied to many of their Cuban rivals. (321)
NYC itself was the base of operations of one of those "large US sugar companies," the American Sugar Refining Company, whose main plant was the Domino Sugar Refinery on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (now a mixed-development facility and a National Landmark). Domino was the company's flagship brand.
New York Times, 12 November 1920, p. 6. Chronicling America.
n 1920, the plant was coming off peak operations; it is estimated that 4,500 employees worked there in 1919 (“HAVEMEYERS & ELDER FILTER, PAN & FINISHING HOUSE,” National Landmarks Commission). The Company was even considering enlarging the facility and proposed to take over several streets in the neighborhood. However, one hundred years ago today, the company withdrew the application.
Wall Street Journal, 12 November 1920, p. 9. Chronicling America.
Caught up in US colonial control in the Caribbean, sugar stocks were a complicated economic proposition, and companies advertised their expertise as traders.
New York Times, 12 November 1920, p. 26. Chronicling America..
References/Further reading:
Pollitt, Brian H. "The Rise and Fall of the Cuban Sugar Economy." Journal of Latin American Studies, May, 2004, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 319-348
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, NOVEMBER 12, 2020.
TAGS: sugar, food, international trade, brands, imperialism, exploitation