Antagonism

It's late. I am absorbed in Martineau's chapter on "Competition" in the sugar industry:

"The remarkable and sudden growth of the beetroot sugar industry, as related in the last chapter, was stimulated in every possible way, first by a quiet, unseen but well-known system of under-estimate of the duty to be levied, coupled with full payment of drawback on exportation. All this the reader must have thoroughly realized from the facts just described. He must now be led, for a moment, a step further back in the history, to a time in the early sixties when the beetroot industry was still in its youth and the dominant factor in the European sugar markets was the refiner. We made all our own refined sugar in those days and were quite happy. But our comfortable times were to be rudely disturbed." (S)


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