In most towns and cities there is a sweets outlet and it is strange if there is only one place. Most of us like sweets or items which come with sugar in them, what most of us do not know or really want to know is the history of bringing sugar to market. This is why Elizabeth Abbott title is Sugar – A Bittersweet History, Penguin Books, Toronto, 2008. Similar to most crops in agriculture now most of the large operations are done by machines – specialized harvesters and other tractors and farm equipment. However if you look to the past, the work was done by humans. In sugar and cotton, the answer to meet the demand of Europe was to use slaves.

From an operational point of view, the first sugar were expensive and only something the upper income would use. Much of the sugars used came from honey and bees. Eventually cane sugar was discovered and it grew in climates the Europeans were discovering. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, looking for a quicker way to the South Asian islands and their spices. Columbus arrived in the Caribbean and was given gold. He and his crew were quickly struck with gold fever and went on to takeover the gold fields in Mexico. The gold made Spain the richest country in the world and they had money to figure out what to do with the islands. Sugar cane was introduced and soon it was producing to meet the demands of Europe. Every year the demand for sugar grew and Britain and France eventually established colonies they jumped into the sugar trade.

From a purely economic point of view – the slave trade made economic sense. Using England as an example, the ships were built and outfitted in England which caused economic activity, the ships sailed south to Africa to pick up a cargo of people, they sailed across the Atlantic and picked up sugar and other products to bring back to England to be processed. The extra value of commodities is in the processing of the commodity and in England, the manufacturers passed laws against manufacturing facilities on the islands. The cane sugar which had gone through its first level of processing was brought back to England to be processed and distributed throughout the country. This allowed the English to enjoy their tea and sugars. In the above example, the families who owned or financed the ships and their cargos cemented their bonds together through intermarriage. In England, the West India Group ensured a number of their members sat in Parliament to both enhance their operations and to ensure Parliament did not vote against the economic activity.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, it is hard for most companies to have a past which laws or morals of today were not broken. It matters what a company does now and in the future or does it represent your values. Often laws change slowly, but there are reasons why law changes slowly – people are benefiting from the existing methods.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions