David Singerman

And it was the worst work.

Yeah.

The sugar industry generated so much wealth for the people who owned plantations and the people who traded it that it was very politically influential in pretty much any sort of political system that we've been talking about in the West.

I would say that the sugar industry's modern level of political influence really begins after the Civil War due to American industrial expansion and economic growth and the way that America became richer in the last part of the 19th century.

But one thing that happened that was a little bit unexpected was sugar consumption went way up and the federal government happened to have a sugar tariff at the time.

Sugar imports are one of the ways that the federal government made its money.

And as the sugar imports kept going up and up and up, the government kind of got addicted to sugar tariffs in the same way that Americans got addicted to sugar.

And so by the late 1870s, early 1880s, sugar revenues are accounting for a huge part of the federal budget.

But also, the sugar refining industry, I should say, is one of the largest employers in the big cities of the North.

So

It's very politically concentrated and it has its fingers in a lot of political questions.

Yes.

There's a pamphlet that the Philadelphia Sugar Company put out in the 1920s.

And this is completely representative of the kind of marketing around tobacco.

sugar for most of the 20th century.

So if I can just read you a little quote from this, it says, the food value of sugar is surprisingly high.

Per pound, it contains almost twice as many calories as beefsteak.

The high dietary value of sugar is universally recognized by scientists and physicians.

It is.

By the 1950s and 60s, what you see in sugar industry propaganda is really pushing back on concerns about like dental health, diabetes.