The profit thus obtained constituted a working fund to be used in forcing into line such factory owners as remained outside the pool, either by reducing the price when a factory was about to begin to make white sugar, or by buying stock in the corporations that still held out. Out of the rest of the fund was paid the difference between the market price (with 22 kronen per 100 kilograms as a minimum) and the 30 kronen. Any amount remaining was the cartel’s profit. To illustrate and estimating that no kilograms of raw sugar produced 100 kilograms of refined: Price of refined sugar for domestic use per 220.4 lbs. $17.25 Raw sugar 242.4 lbs. @ $4.46 per 220.4 lbs. $4.91 Refining cost and profit 1.53 Revenue tax 7.71 14.15 --------------- Net profit of cartel $3.10 With an open market price of $4.46 for raws, the difference between that and the arbitrary figure of $6.08 is $1.62 per 220.4 lbs. on 242.4 lbs. 1.78 --------------- Net profit from cartel for refiners $1.32 Reference has been made to the abortive results of the London conference of 1886, when a deaf ear was turned to the appeal of the planters of the British West Indies on account of the advantage to the British manufacturer and consumer of securing all the sugar they wanted at a figure lower than it cost to produce. In 1895, Joseph Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary of Great Britain, appointed a royal commission to investigate conditions in the West Indian colonies. The facts brought out in its report came as a surprise to the statesmen of the mother country and remedial measures were undertaken. The anxiety of the Austrian and German governments to get rid of the bounty incubus led them to sound France as to her views, and in 1898 the Belgian government invited representatives of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Russia, Spain and Sweden to meet in conference in Brussels, but no definite agreement was arrived at, chiefly because of France’s unwillingness to discontinue the giving of indirect bounty. The meeting adjourned on June 1st with the understanding that it would again convene at the call of Belgium, when the preliminary negotiations through Belgium’s good offices had progressed sufficiently to make unanimity possible. Meanwhile, public opinion in England with regard to the West Indies had undergone a change, partly on account of the report submitted by the Chamberlain commission and partly owing to the fact that Britain, needing the support of her colonies in her South African war, was anxious to shape her policy to please them. A third conference was held in Brussels in December, 1901.