Owing, however, to a severe agricultural crisis at this time, American cereals were brought into Europe at such low prices that the home grower could not compete. It therefore became necessary to find another crop for the land that had been sown to corn and the beet-root was the logical substitute. The increase in beet production from this cause was followed by a crash in sugar prices. With such a condition confronting it, the German government could not do away with, or even reduce, the bounty, especially as none of its neighbors seemed to have any intention of doing anything in this direction. In the interests of the beet growers, the output of beets in 1895, instead of being restricted as proposed, was doubled, and the export bounty on raw sugar was raised from 1.25[24] marks to 2.50 marks per 100 kilograms and on refined from 2 marks to 3.55 marks per 100 kilograms. This legislation was meant to foster the export trade and bring the sugar business of foreign countries to German manufacturers, and the framers of the law were confident that other countries would not venture to follow suit. In this they were utterly mistaken. Germany’s competitors simply raised their bounties to her figures, thus nullifying her plans for expansion of her export sugar trade. In 1897 the United States levied a countervailing duty on all bounty-nourished sugar, in addition to the regular protective tariff, so that the bounty paid by European countries on sugar exported to the United States simply went to enrich the United States treasury. The manufacturers of Germany and Austria enjoyed a profit over and above the bounty by the adoption of what was termed a cartel, or pool, a plan borrowed from Russia.