Expansion
The combination expanded horizontally for about twenty years as new competitors arose; later, it expanded vertically, undertaking the production of cane sugar and raw sugar in Cuba and acquiring lumber interests. In May 1896, the American Sugar Refining Company became one of the original 12 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company was investigated by the Industrial Commission in 1900 and by a special congressional committee in 1911–1912.
In 1910, the federal government began a suit to dissolve the company,[10] which was accused of having secured favorable tariff legislation by corrupt means.[11] American Sugar opposed free trade with Cuba in order to maintain tariff protections for processed sugar, while pushing for privileged importation of raw sugar.[12] By 1929, the company was producing over a fifth of the refined sugar consumed in the United States, at five refineries processing sugar from Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Louisiana.[13] In Cuba it owned 500 square miles of land, 191 miles of railroad, and two factories producing 600 million pounds of raw sugar annually.[13]
American Sugar Refining Company dominated the sugar industry in the United States through most of the 20th Century. Its brands included the dominant Domino Sugar, Franklin Sugar, Sunny Cane Sugar, and its West Coast beet sugar operation under the Spreckels brand. It had major refineries in Brooklyn; Charlestown, Massachusetts;[14] Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chalmette, Louisiana; and Spreckels, California.
