This episode had scandalized the country and intensified the disgust with the sugar refiners which their open swindling in the preceding fifteen years had aroused. When the Democrats in the House came to make their bill they at first proposed a duty of one-fourth cent a pound on refined sugar, half of what McKinley had given. This was undoubtedly one-fourth of a cent too much. With free raw sugar the refiners could carry on their business at a profit. This was demonstrated to Mr. Wilson’s satisfaction while the bill was still in the House, and when it left, refined sugar as well as raw was free. As said above, the bill was referred to a sub-committee of which Colonel Roger Q. Mills was a member. Now Mr. Mills, like most tariff-for-revenue only Democrats, had always held that a tax on raw sugar was one of the least obnoxious that could be placed. It yielded a large and steady revenue. It was true that it was a tax falling more heavily on the poor than on the rich, but unhappily most taxes are unjust in this respect. Holding this opinion, and believing that the bill did not provide sufficient revenue, Mr. Mills, as he later related, said to his colleagues: “We have got to have more money than the Wilson Bill makes, and we have to have a duty on sugar. I do not want it. I do not like to go backwards. I would not have taken sugar off the dutiable list and put it on the free list. It has been done, and I do not like to put anything back on the dutiable list, but we have got to do it, and you may as well make up your minds about it. We have to have more money.” Senators Vest and Jones held out for several days against him, but finally they reluctantly agreed to a duty on raw sugar. On refined they proposed only enough to make up to the refiners for the extra cost of their raw material—that is, a compensatory, not a protective, duty.