BEET  SUGAR  INDUSTRY.
On the other hand, on exportation abroad the treasury-returned the nominal excise in full. These circumstances, and the high prices for sugar which ruled at the end of the «seventies», called forth heavy speculation in our sugar industry, although already in 1881 the system of levying the sugar excise was radically changed, and the excise was now collected on the weight of sugar actually refined, so that the revenue of the treasury increased to twice and thrice what it was before. But the production continued to grow without interruption, reaching in 1885—6 as much as 29,000,000 poods. Prices suddenly fell terribly, and the Government was compelled to take measures to relieve the home markets of the surplus sugar and in this way to keep up the prices. With this object from 1885 begins the payment of premiums on the sugar exported abroad over and above the return of the excise. The export increased considerably, but the chief object, the raising of prices in the home markets, remained unattained, because just in the second half of the «eighties» the crops of beet were particularly good. The Ministry of Finance warned the sugar refiners that they must themselves take steps to reduce the plantations of beet, that the payment of premiums would not be continued. But these warnings had small effect, and in 1886 prices for sugar again fell.
Then the refiners, in 1887, entered into an agreement among each other, after the example of foreign syndicates, obliging each other to export abroad a certain proportion of the yield until the prices in the home markets rise to a definite limit.    Two hundred and ten
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