From 1933 to 1934, Chicago hosted the Century of Progress International Exposition. During the Great Depression, this world’s fair stimulated optimism through displays of industrial achievement. At the same time, Cuba was undergoing a revolution and two government coups. This unrest challenged existing labor relations between sugarcane harvesters and the owners of the fields. At the crosswords of these historical moments was the National Sugar Refining Company of New Jersey. They owned the Jack Frost sugar brand.  The company displayed a nineteen-foot wide, exact-scale model of one of their refineries at the fair. Accompanying it was a souvenir book entitled The Story of Sugar. The book’s cartoons establish a sharp division in labor and race. On one hand, there are sugarcane harvesters. The book calls them “natives” from “Cuba, Java, India, British West Indies, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.” [1] They are collapsed into a single black figure performing physical labor. On the other, the book features white men operating machinery at refineries in the continental United States. The book offers a fantasy of docile and racially divided labor. This is meant to smooth over anxieties about the future of Jack Frost sugar, and white America.

The Story of Sugar describes sugarcane fields as a “picturesque acres of green-leafed ‘bamboo’ reeds stretching as far as the eye can see.” [2] Yet at the time of the book’s publication, Cuba’s cane workers were revolting against their government and the imperialist market. In 1931, Cuban cane workers tired of Geradado Machado’s U.S.-supported dictatorship, and high tariffs on sugar led to protests. [3] In Cuba, the protests took the form of burning sugarcane fields, so that the cane could no longer be harvested. The practice of burning fields in a controlled environment allowed for easier cane cutting. It removed the sharp leaves on the cane stalks and smoked out unwanted pests. Allowing the cane to burn more was a risky display of sugarcane workers’ anger towards the government. It paid off in the 1933 Revolution. The workers’ commitment to overthrowing imperialist influences allowed Grau San Martín’s to take power. [4]  American-controlled sugar prices prevented farmers from directly influencing the market. But the burning of cane demonstrated the high risk and skill required of workers to maintain adequate yields. They took back some of their power from influential companies by destroying the fields. Low cane production and the Great Depression left American sugar companies on the brink of collapse. The Revolution undermined Cuba’s reliability as a source of sugar. Against this precarious backdrop, the National Sugar Refining Company constructed an alternative vision of the cane fields. The Story of Sugar presents a smooth supply chain.

Nor was the division of labor and technology presented in The Story of Sugar accurate. First, soon after harvesting the cane, workers processed it into raw sugar before sending it to refineries. As a result, mills developed advanced chemistry outside of the centers of the Industrial Revolution. [5] Second, sugar beets grown in the continental U.S., often by white farmers, were the largest source of American sugar after Cuban sugarcane. [6] The Story of Sugar came to fruition at the same time as plans for the Sugar Act of 1934. The latter recognized the related interests of the many groups involved in sugar production and consumption. It attempted to bring these various interests into accord through production quotas. Certainly, it may have favored some interests over others. Still, white manufacturers in the U.S. lacked the dominance and uniformity implied in The Story of Sugar. [7]

Against the backdrop of an uncertain and changing sugar industry, The Story of Sugar offered a simple vision. It assigned peaceful harvesting to non-white workers around the world. A single black figure personified these diverse workers. Technology, by contrast, was placed firmly in white hands. The Century of Progress intended to inspire optimism through displays of technological advancement. But this optimism was clearly connected to whiteness. The National Sugar Refining Company of New Jersey had an interest in maintaining both white optimism and the illusion of a stable supply chain. At the time, they had 600,000 stock shares, a majority of which were issued or outstanding. [8] Not only were their consumers among the thirty-nine million visitors who paid for admission to the fair; shareholders, current or potential, may also have been in attendance. [9] –Kristen Noble and Jonathan Mandel

 

[1] National Sugar Refining Co. of N.J., The Story of Sugar (New York: National Sugar Refining Co. of N.J., 1933): 5.

[2] Ibid., 7.

[3] Gillian McGillivray, Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, & State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959, (Durham, Duke University Press, 2009): 195.

[4] Ibid., 9.

[5] Steven C. Topik and Allen Wells, Global Markets Transformed, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014): 197.

[6] Roy A Ballinger, “A History of Sugar Marketing Through 1974” (US Department of Agriculture / Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service, 1934): 33-4.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Sugar Reference Book and Directory (New York, Palmer Publishing Corp, 1941): 49.

[9] Frank Monaghan, “Century of Progress International Exposition,” in Dictionary of American History, ed. James Truslow Adams and R. V. Coleman (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942): 335. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8525355.