The foregoing is a brief account of the course of taxation introduced for purposes of protection as described by M. Pillado. At this point he takes occasion to moralise on the iniquity of the system, and exclaims that it is a matter of congratulation that the promoters of the industry did not think fit to produce even further from the great centres, somewhere on the borders of Bolivia. In emphasising these existing burdens, however, the writer is merely making a dramatic pause preparatory to enlarging on the further excess in the institution of bounties on export. The immediate result of this tariff was naturally an immense rise in the price of all sugar, and subsequently the practical exclusion of the imported article. The figures cited in the work speak for themselves. In 1884 the total imports of sugar of all classes were 35,000 tons. In 1902 they had fallen to 155 tons. While the next year saw an importation of some hundred tons of refined sugar, the other grades were represented by a total of about 300 lbs. We now come to the real interest of the question--the effect namely which this policy had upon the industry itself and the devices which the latter adopted to regulate prices. In the first instance an unparalleled boom took place. In 1884 the production was 75,000 tons. In 1895 it was 109,000. In the following year the sum of 134,417 tons was reached--a production quite in excess of the country's requirements. The result was that in the words of M. Pillado, "the refiners began to cry to heaven and to earth for any solution whatever to rescue them from the asphyxiation which threatened to overwhelm at one and the same time themselves and their system." For the planters, however, Tucuman had become a veritable Eldorado. Two years sufficed to give a net return four times as great as the capital invested. As a natural consequence it followed that labour and capital flowed into the Sugar districts, creating an unprecedented boom and denuding the other agricultural industries not only of the province but of the rest of the republic as well of their very necessities of existence. The effect was felt, apparently even in the capital, so that "lawyers deserted their profession, workmen their tools, to throw themselves with a regular fever into an occupation so full of promise." Works sprang up as if by magic. Palaces were constructed to house the staffs. Capital was lavished on the industry by individuals and banking houses alike. No one, in short, took the slightest pains to investigate the stability of the trade, and investments were made with complete recklessness.