Item Detail
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22055
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0
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0
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English
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The Battle over Tariff reduction : The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Senator Reed Smoot, and the 1913 Underwood Act
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Utah in the Twentieth Century
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Logan, UT
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Utah State University Press
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186-205
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"Throughout the early twentieth century, Utah's economy was based on two major industries--agriculture and mining. The Mormon Church and the local sugar companies encouraged farmers to raise sugar beets as a cash crop. Utah representatives in Congress, especially Mormon Apostle and Senator Reed Smoot, supported a high tariff to protect the sugar beet industry in the state. Using newspapers, congressional records, and Smoot's diaries, Matthew C. Godfrey's essay documents the arguments to prevent the elimination of the sugar tariff in 1913. Because of a Democratic Congress, the Underwood Bill passed, reducing the tariff on imported sugar. Godfrey shows that the sugar beet industry was affected but not completely destroyed. Smoot remained convinced of the need for a high tariff and was an author of the 1930 Hawley-Smoot Act, which raised tariffs and isolated America at the beginning of the great depression." [Editor's abstract]