1. Section 205(a) of the Sugar Act of 1948 authorizes the
Secretary of Agriculture to make allotments of sugar quotas which
may be marketed in the United States, and requires that he do so
"in such manner and in such amounts as to provide a fair,
efficient, and equitable distribution" of the quota, "by taking
into consideration" (1) processings to which proportionate shares
pertained, (2) past marketings, and (3) ability to market. In
issuing Puerto Rico Sugar Order No. 18, which allotted among the
various Puerto Rican refineries the 1948 quota of Puerto Rican
refined sugar which could be marketed on the mainland, the
Secretary took as the measure of "past marketings" the average of
the highest five years of marketings during the 1935-1941 period;
took as the measure of "ability to market" the highest marketings
of any year during the 1935-1947 period; gave equal weight to these
factors, and considered, but concluded to give no weight to,
processings to which proportionate shares pertained.
Held: he did not act arbitrarily or exceed the
authority granted him by the Act. Pp.
338 U. S.
605-614.
2. The Sugar Act of 1948, as applied in Puerto Rico Sugar Order
No. 18, is a valid exercise of the power of Congress under the
Commerce Clause, and does not violate the Due Process Clause of the
Fifth Amendment. Pp.
338 U. S.
614-619.
3. In view of the conclusion reached on the constitutional
issues, which had to be met apart from any jurisdictional question,
it is unnecessary in this case to decide the question of Puerto
Rico's standing to sue. Pp.
338 U. S.
619-620.
84 U.S.App.D.C. 161, 171 F.2d 1016, reversed.
On appeals from an order issued by the Secretary of Agriculture
under the Sugar Act of 1948, the Court of
Page 338 U. S. 605
Appeals reversed the order as not authorized by the Act. 84
U.S.App.D.C. 161, 171 F.2d 1016. This Court granted certiorari. 336
U.S. 959. Nos. 27 and 30
reversed; No. 32
dismissed, p.
338 U. S.
620.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
These three cases bring before us the validity of an order of
the Secretary of Agriculture, issued by him on the basis of the
Sugar Act of 1948. It is claimed that the Secretary disobeyed the
requirements of that Act. If it be found that the Secretary brought
himself within the Act, the power of Congress to give him the
authority he exercised is challenged. By a series of enactments,
Congress addressed itself to what it found to be serious evils
Page 338 U. S. 606
resulting from an uncontrolled sugar market. The central aim of
this legislation was to rationalize the mischievous fluctuations of
a free sugar market by the familiar device of a quota system. The
Jones-Costigan Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 670, the Sugar Act of 1937, 50
Stat. 903, and the Sugar Act of 1948, 61 Stat. 922, 7 U.S.C. (Supp.
II, 1949), §§ 1100-1160.
The volume of sugar moving to the continental United States
market was controlled to secure a harmonious relation between
supply and demand. [
Footnote 1]
To adapt means to the purpose of the sugar legislation, the Act of
1948 defines five domestic sugar producing areas: two in the
continental United States and one each in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and
the Virgin Islands. To each area is allotted an annual quota of
sugar, specifying the maximum number of tons which may be marketed
on the mainland from that area. § 202(a). A quota is likewise
assigned to the Philippines. § 202(b). The balance of the needs of
consumers in the continental United States, to be determined each
year by the Secretary, § 201, is met by importation from foreign
countries, predominantly from Cuba, of the requisite amount of
sugar. § 202(c).
The quotas thus established apply to sugar in any form, raw or
refined. In addition, § 207 of the Act establishes fixed limits on
the tonnage of "direct consumption," or refined, sugar [
Footnote 2] which may be marketed
annually on the mainland from the offshore areas as part of their
total
Page 338 U. S. 607
sugar quotas. But mainland refiners are not subject to quota
limitations upon the marketing of refined sugar.
The Puerto Rican quota for "direct consumption" sugar is 126,033
tons. This figure had its genesis in the Jones-Costigan Act of
1934, which provided that the quota for each offshore area was to
be the largest amount shipped to the mainland in any one of the
three preceding years. 48 Stat. 670, 672-73. In the case of Puerto
Rico, this was computed by the Secretary at 126,033 tons. General
Sugar Quota Regulations, Ser. 2, Rev. 1, p. 4, August 17, 1935. By
the Sugar Acts of 1937 and 1948, Congress embedded this amount in
legislation. All the details for the control of a commodity like
sugar could not, of course, be legislatively predetermined.
Administrative powers are an essential part of such a regulatory
scheme. The powers conferred by § 205(a) upon the Secretary of
Agriculture raise some of the serious issues in this litigation. By
that section, Congress authorized the Secretary to allot the
refined sugar quota as well as the inclusive allowance of a
particular area among those marketing the sugar on the mainland
from that area. [
Footnote 3]
The section provides that
"Allotments shall be
Page 338 U. S. 608
made in such manner and in such amounts as to provide a fair,
efficient, and equitable distribution of such quota or proration
thereof by taking into consideration"
three factors: (1) "processings of sugar . . . to which
proportionate shares . . . pertained;" [
Footnote 4] (2) past marketings, and (3) ability to market
the amount allotted.
On January 21, 1948, the Secretary issued Puerto Rico Sugar
Order No. 18, 13 Fed.Reg. 310, allotting the 1948 Puerto Rican
refined sugar quota among the various refineries of the island.
Having satisfied himself of the need for an allotment, the
Secretary, in conformity with the procedural requirements of §
205(a), apportioned the quota among the individual refiners,
setting forth in appropriate findings the manner in which he
applied the three statutory standards for allotment.
As to "past marketings," he found that the proper measure was
the average of the highest five years of marketings during the
seven-year period of 1935-1941. While
Page 338 U. S. 609
recognizing that ordinarily the most recent period of marketings
furnished the appropriate data, he concluded that the period
1942-1947 was unrepresentative, in that the war needs made those
years abnormal, and not a fair basis for purposes of the economic
stabilization which was the aim of the 1948 Act. Shortages as to
transportation, storage, and materials, caused by the war, led to
special government control. These circumstances resulted in
hardships or advantages in varying degrees to different refiners,
quite unrelated to a fair system of quotas for the post-war
period.
Likewise, as to "the ability . . . to market," the Secretary
recognized that marketings during a recent period ordinarily
furnished the best measure. But again, he found that the
derangements of the war years served to make that measure abnormal.
He therefore concluded that a fairer guide to his judgment came
from the highest marketings of any year during the 1935-1947
period, using, however, present plant capacity as a corrective.
The Secretary duly considered "the processings of sugar" to
which proportionate shares pertained, but concluded that this
factor could not fairly be applied. This was so because it referred
to processings of raw sugar from sugar cane, whereas the three
largest Puerto Rican refining concerns restricted themselves to
refining raw sugar after it had already been processed. He felt
bound therefore to give no weight to this factor in the sum he
finally struck, and gave equal weight to past marketings and
ability to market.
Availing themselves of § 205(b), respondents, Central Roig
Refining Company and Western Sugar Refining Company, two of the
three largest refiners in Puerto Rico, appealed from the
Secretary's order to the Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia. They charged the Secretary with disregard of the
standards which Congress imposed by § 205(a) for his guidance in
making
Page 338 U. S. 610
allotment of quotas; they challenged the validity of the Act
itself under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Porto
Rican American Sugar Refinery, Inc., petitioner in No. 30, the
largest of the Puerto Rican refiners, intervened to defend the
Secretary's order against the statutory attack. The Government of
Puerto Rico, petitioner in No. 32, intervened to urge the
unconstitutionality of the statute, which the American Sugar
Refining Company and other mainland refiners intervened to meet
this attack. Being of opinion that the Secretary's order was not
authorized by the Act, the Court of Appeals reversed it. 84
U.S.App.D.C. 161, 171 F.2d 1016. Since the order failed on
statutory grounds, a majority of that court did not deem it proper
to decide the constitutional question. Because of the obvious
importance of the decision below in the administration of the Sugar
Act, we granted certiorari. 336 U.S. 959.
I. In making quota allotments, the Secretary of Agriculture
must, of course, keep scrupulously within the limits set by the
Sugar Act of 1948. In devising the framework of control, Congress
fixed the flat quotas for the sugar producing areas. Congress could
not itself, as a practical matter, allot the area quotas among
individual marketers. The details on which fair judgment must be
based are too shifting, and judgment upon them calls for too
specialized understanding, to make direct congressional
determination feasible. Almost inescapably, the function of
allotting the area quotas among individual marketers becomes an
administrative function entrusted to the member of the Cabinet
charged with oversight of the agricultural economy of the nation.
He could not be left at large, and yet he could not be rigidly
bounded. Either extreme would defeat the control system. They could
be avoided only by laying down standards of such breadth as
inevitably to give the Secretary leeway for his expert judgment.
Its exercise presumes
Page 338 U. S. 611
a judgment at once comprehensive and conscientious. Accordingly,
Congress instructed the Secretary to make allotments "in such
manner and in such amounts as to provide a fair, efficient, and
equitable distribution" of the quota.
In short, Congress gave the Secretary discretion commensurate
with the legislative goal. Allocation of quotas to individual
marketers was deemed an essential part of the regulatory scheme.
The complexity of problems affecting raw and refined sugar in
widely separated and economically disparate areas, accentuated by
the instability of the differentiating factors, must have persuaded
Congress of the need for continuous detailed administrative
supervision. [
Footnote 5] In
any event, such is the plain purport of the legislation.
By way of guiding the Secretary in formulating a fair
distribution of individual allotments, Congress directed him to
exercise his discretion "by taking into consideration" three
factors: past marketings, ability to market, and processings to
which proportionate shares pertained. Plainly these are not
mechanical or self-defining standards. They, in turn, imply wide
areas of judgment, and therefore of discretion. The fact that the
Secretary's judgment is finally expressed arithmetically gives an
illusory definiteness to the process of reaching it. Moreover, he
is under a duty merely to take "into
Page 338 U. S. 612
consideration" the particularized factors. The Secretary cannot
be heedless of these factors in the sense, for instance, of
refusing to hear relevant evidence bearing on them. But Congress
did not think it was feasible to bind the Secretary as to the part
his "consideration" of these three factors should play in his final
judgment -- what weight each should be given or whether, in a
particular situation, all three factors must play a quantitative
share in his computation.
It was evidently deemed fair that, in a controlled market, each
producer should be permitted to retain more or less the share of
the market which he had acquired in the past. Accordingly, past
marketings were to be taken into consideration in the Secretary's
allotments. But the past is relevant only if it furnishes a
representative index of the relative positions of different
marketers. And there is no calculus available for determining
whether a base period for measurement is fairly representative.
Whether conditions have been so unusual as to make a period
unrepresentative is not a matter of counting figures, but of
weighing imponderables. If he is to exercise the function of
allotting a limited supply among avid contenders for it, the
Secretary cannot escape the necessity of passing judgment on their
relative competitive positions. For Congress announced that one of
the main purposes justifying the making of allotments is "to afford
all interested persons an equitable opportunity to market sugar." §
205(a).
In directing the Secretary to take into consideration ability to
market, Congress in effect charged the Secretary with making a
forecast of the marketers' capacity to perform in the immediate
future. Such a forecast no doubt draws heavily on experience, but
history never quite repeats itself, even in the vicissitudes of
industry. Whether ability to market is most rationally measured by
plant capacity or by past performance, whether, if the latter,
Page 338 U. S. 613
the base period should be a year, and what year or a group of
years and what group -- these are not questions to be dealt with as
statistical problems. They require a disinterested, informed
judgment based on circumstances themselves difficult of prophetic
interpretation.
The proper mode of ascertaining "processings of sugar . . . to
which proportionate shares . . . pertained" is not here in
controversy. Perhaps this factor, too, implies choice. But the
question common to all three standards is whether the Secretary may
conclude, after due consideration, that, in the particular
situation before him, it is not essential that each of the three
factors be quantitatively reflected in the final allotment formula.
Concededly, § 205(a) empowers the Secretary to attribute different
influences to the three factors. Obviously, one factor may be more
influential than another in the sense of furnishing a better means
of achieving a "fair, efficient, and equitable distribution." But
it is not consonant with reason to authorize the Secretary to find
in the context of the situation before him that a criterion has
little value, and is entitled to no more than nominal weight, but
to find it unreasonable for him to conclude that this factor has no
significance, and therefore should not be at all reflected
quantitatively.
Congress did not predetermine the periods of time to which the
standards should be related or the respective weights to be
accorded them. In this respect, the sugar quota scheme differs from
the quotas designed by Congress for tobacco, wheat, cotton, and
rice, respectively.
See §§ 313(a), 334(a), 344(a) and
353(a) of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 47, 53,
57, 61, as amended, 7 U.S.C. §§ 1313(a), 1334(a), 1344(a), 1353(a).
Nor do the bare words of § 205(a) confine the Secretary in the
responsible exercise of discretion beyond the limitation inherent
upon such delegated authority. He is not free to be capricious, to
act without reason, that
Page 338 U. S. 614
is, in relation to the attainment of the objects declared by §
205(a). The very standards for his conduct, the attainment of
"fair, efficient, and equitable distribution" preclude abstract or
doctrinaire categories. A variety of plans of allotment may well
conform to the statutory standards. But the choice among permissive
plans is necessarily the Secretary's; he is the agency entrusted by
Congress to make the choice.
These considerations dispose of this phase of the case. We would
have to replace the Secretary's judgment with our own to hold that,
on the record before us, he acted arbitrarily in reaching the
conviction that the years 1935-1941 furnished a fairer measure of
past marketings than the war years 1942-1947. Nor can we hold that
it was baseless for him to decide that increased marketings during
the war years may be taken to mean improved ability to market, but
decreased marketings do not justify the opposite conclusion. And it
was within his province to exclude from his determination the
processings of sugar to which proportionate shares pertained. It is
not for us to reject the balance he struck on consideration of all
the factors unless we can say that his judgment is not one that a
fair-minded tribunal with specialized knowledge could have reached.
This we cannot say. We conclude, therefore, that, in issuing Order
No. 18, the Secretary did not exceed the authority given him by
Congress.
II. We must therefore face the challenge to the
constitutionality of the Act of 1948. This objection to the order
in support of their judgment below is clearly open to respondents
in Nos. 27 and 30. The Government of Puerto Rico likewise
challenges the constitutionality of the Act. But its status in this
litigation raises a distinct issue, consideration of which will be
postponed for the moment.
Page 338 U. S. 615
The sugar problem of the country is an old and obstinate one.
For fourteen years, Congress grappled with it through the mechanism
of quotas. Three enactments, culminating in the Sugar Act of 1948,
represented an effort to deal with what were deemed to be the
harmful effects on interstate and foreign commerce of progressively
depressed sugar prices of earlier years created by world surpluses,
or, if one prefers it, by the conditions that reflected the
imbalance between production and consumption. [
Footnote 6] The legislation presupposes a finding
by Congress that producers and marketers of sugar could not
adequately respond to market changes merely through the mechanism
of a free market, and that the public interest, insofar as the
Commerce Clause may be drawn upon to meet it, needed controls to
supplement and replace the haggling of the market.
Congress might, of course, have limited its intervention to the
raw sugar market, trusting that thereby stability in the refined
sugar market would be produced. Congress thought otherwise; it
evidently felt that competition among refiners for a legally
limited supply of raw sugar, in a period of overexpanded refining
capacity, [
Footnote 7] ought
not to be left at large. In any event, Congress had the
constitutional right to think otherwise and to bring the refining
of sugar within its regulatory scheme.
Page 338 U. S. 616
See Mulford v. Smith, 307 U. S. 38;
United States v. Rock Royal Co-operative, Inc.,
307 U. S. 533;
Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111.
It is a commonplace that reforms may bring in their train new
difficulties. In any scheme of reform, their prevention or
mitigation becomes a proper legislative concern. While ameliorating
the effect of disorderly competition, market controls generate
problems of their own not encountered under a competitive system.
Such new problems are not outside the comprehensive scope of the
great Commerce Clause. Nor does the Commerce Clause impose
requirements of geographic uniformity. (
Compare Art. I, §
8, cl. 1 and cl. 4.) Congress may devise, as it has done in the
Sugar Act of 1948, a national policy with due regard for the
varying and fluctuating interests of different regions.
See,
e.g., Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co.,
242 U. S. 311;
Kentucky Whip & Collar Co. v. Illinois Central R. Co.,
299 U. S. 334;
Prudential Insurance Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U.
S. 408. And, since the Act of 1948 does not even
remotely impinge on any of the specific limitations upon the
Commerce Clause (Art. I, § 9, cl. 5 and cl. 6), we are not
concerned with the vexing problem of the applicability of these
clauses to Puerto Rico.
Compare Downes v. Bidwell,
182 U. S. 244;
Dooley v. United States, 183 U. S. 151;
Alaska v. Troy, 258 U. S. 101;
Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.
S. 652,
324 U. S. 670,
n. 5.
However, not even resort to the Commerce Clause can defy the
standards of due process. We assume that these standards extend to
regulations of commerce that enmesh Puerto Rico.
See United
States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.
S. 144,
304 U. S.
148-151;
United States v. Darby, 312 U.
S. 100,
312 U. S.
125-126;
Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.
S. 298,
258 U. S. 313.
The Sugar Act of 1948 is claimed to offend the Due Process Clause
of the Fifth Amendment because of the alleged discriminatory
character and the oppressive
Page 338 U. S. 617
effects of the refined sugar quota established by the Act. If
ever claims of this sort carried plausibility, they seem to us
singularly belated in view of the unfolding of the Commerce
Clause.
The use of quotas on refined sugar, legislatively apportioned to
different geographic areas and administratively allocated to
individual beneficiaries, is a device based on the Agricultural
Adjustment Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 31, as amended, 7 U.S.C. § 1281
et seq., and sanctioned by this Court in
Mulford v.
Smith, supra. The problem which confronted Congress was not
the setting of quotas, abstractly considered, but so to fix their
amount as to achieve approximate justice in the shares allotted to
each area and the persons within it. To recognize the problem is to
acknowledge its perplexities.
Congress was thus confronted with the formulation of policy
peculiarly within its wide swath of discretion. It would be a
singular intrusion of the judiciary into the legislative process to
extrapolate restrictions upon the formulation of such an economic
policy from those deeply rooted notions of justice which the Due
Process Clause expresses. To fix quotas on a strict historical
basis is hard on latecomers into the industry or on those in it who
desire to expand. On the other hand, to the extent that newcomers
are allowed to enter or old-timers to expand there must either be
an increase in supply or a reduction in the quotas of others. Many
other factors must plague those charged with the formulation of
policy -- the extent to which projected expansion is a function of
efficiency or becomes a depressant of wage standards; the wise
direction of capital into investments, and the economic waste
incident to what may be, on the short or the long pull,
overexpansion of industrial facilities; the availability of a more
suitable basis for the fixing of quotas, etc., etc. The final
judgment is too apt to be a hodge-podge of considerations,
including considerations
Page 338 U. S. 618
that may well weigh with legislators, but which this Court can
hardly dissentangle.
Suffice it to say that, since Congress fixed the quotas on a
historical basis, it is not for this Court to reweigh the relevant
factors and, perchance, substitute its notion of expediency and
fairness for that of Congress. This is so even though the quotas
thus fixed may demonstrably be disadvantageous to certain areas or
persons. This Court is not a tribunal for relief from the crudities
and inequities of complicated experimental economic legislation.
See Wickard v. Filburn, supra, at
317 U. S.
129.
Congress, it is insisted, has not established refined sugar
quotas for the mainland refiners as it has for the offshore areas.
Whatever inequalities may thereby be created, this is not the forum
for their correction, for the all-sufficient reason that the extent
and nature of inequalities are themselves controversial matters
hardly meet for judicial solution. Thus, while the mainland
refiners are legally free to purchase and refine all sugar within
the raw sugar quota, and Puerto Rican refiners are limited to their
shares of the refined sugar quota, Congress apparently thought that
Puerto Rican refiners operated at costs sufficiently low to
insulate them from mainland competition. In addition, it is claimed
that, since the total supply of raw sugar permitted to enter the
mainland market is limited, the mainland refiners are, in effect,
also subject to the refined sugar quota, although, in contrast to
the unchanging quotas of the territories, the mainland quota will
vary with changes in the total consumer demand. Because this demand
tends to be stable, however, the mainland refiners' share of the
refined sugar has not, it is urged, greatly expanded during the
years when quotas were in effect. Congress might well have thought
that relatively minor contractions and expansions in supply from
year to year should thus be absorbed.
Page 338 U. S. 619
Plainly it is not the business of judges to sit in judgment on
the validity or the significance of such views. The Act may impose
hardships here and there; the incidence of hardship may shift in
location and intensity. It is not for us to have views on the
merits of this legislation. It suffices that we cannot say, as we
cannot, that there is "discrimination of such an injurious
character as to bring into operation the due process clause."
Currin v. Wallace, 306 U. S. 1,
306 U. S. 14.
Expressions of dissatisfaction by the Executive, and in some
quarters of Congress, that the refined sugar quotas were
"arbitrary," "discriminatory," and "unfair" may reflect greater
wisdom or greater fairness than the collective wisdom of Congress
which put this Act on the statute books. But the issue was thrashed
out in Congress; Congress is the place for its reconsideration.
III. There remains Puerto Rico's right to participate in this
litigation. Puerto Rico can have no better standing to challenge
the constitutionality of the Sugar Act of 1948 than if it were a
full-fledged State. The right of a State to press such a claim
raises familiar difficulties.
Compare Massachusetts v.
Mellon, 262 U. S. 447;
Florida v. Mellon, 273 U. S. 12;
Jones ex rel. Louisiana v. Bowles, 322 U.S. 707,
with
Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 206 U.
S. 230;
New York v. New Jersey, 256 U.
S. 296;
Georgia v. Pennsylvania R. Co.,
324 U. S. 439.
Whatever rights Puerto Rico has as a polity,
see Porto Rico v.
Rosaly, 227 U. S. 270;
Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U.
S. 253;
Puerto Rico v. Rubert Hermanos, Inc.,
309 U. S. 543, the
Island is not a State. Additional legal questions are raised
whether Puerto Rico can press the interests that it is here
pressing. In view of the conclusion that we have reached on the
constitutional issues which had to be met apart from any
jurisdictional question, it would entail an empty discussion to
decide whether Puerto Rico
Page 338 U. S. 620
has a standing as a party in this case. It would, in effect, be
merely an advisory opinion on a delicate subject. Since the real
issues raised by Puerto Rico have already been decided in Nos. 27
and 30, it becomes unnecessary to decide the question of Puerto
Rico's standing to sue.
Wickard v. Filburn, supra, at
317 U. S. 114,
n. 3.
Nos. 27 and 30 reversed.
No. 32 dismissed.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK would affirm the judgment of the United States
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the
reasons given in the court's opinion. 84 U.S.App.D.C. 161, 171 F.2d
1016.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS took no part in the consideration or
disposition of these cases.
* Together with No. 30,
Porto Rican American Sugar Refinery,
Inc. v. Central Roig Refining Co. et al., and No. 32,
Puerto Rico v. Secretary of Agriculture et al., also on
certiorari to the same court.
[
Footnote 1]
In the course of this opinion, all expressions of an economic
character are to be attributed to those who have authority to make
such economic judgments -- the Congress and the Secretary of
Agriculture -- and are not to be deemed the independent judgments
of the Court. It is not our right to pronounce economic views; we
are confined to passing on the right of the Congress and the
Secretary to act on the basis of entertainable economic
judgments.
[
Footnote 2]
With minor exceptions not relevant here, the term "direct
consumption" sugar in the Act refers to refined sugar.
[
Footnote 3]
The full text of § 205(a) is as follows:
"Whenever the Secretary finds that the allotment of any quota,
or proration thereof, established for any area pursuant to the
provisions of this Act is necessary to assure an orderly and
adequate flow of sugar or liquid sugar in the channels of
interstate or foreign commerce, or to prevent disorderly marketing
or importation of sugar or liquid sugar, or to maintain a
continuous and stable supply of sugar or liquid sugar, or to afford
all interested persons an equitable opportunity to market sugar or
liquid sugar within any area's quota, after such hearing and upon
such notice as he may by regulations prescribe, he shall make
allotments of such quota or proration thereof by allotting to
persons who market or import sugar or liquid sugar, for such
periods as he may designate, the quantities of sugar or liquid
sugar which each such person may market in continental United
States, the Territory of Hawaii, or Puerto Rico, or may import or
bring into continental United States, for consumption therein.
Allotments shall be made in such manner and in such amounts as to
provide a fair, efficient, and equitable distribution of such quota
or proration thereof by taking into consideration the processings
of sugar or liquid sugar from sugar beets or sugar cane to which
proportionate shares, determined pursuant to the provisions of
subsection (b) of section 302, pertained, the past marketings or
importations of each such person, and the ability of such person to
market or import that portion of such quota or proration thereof
allotted to him. The Secretary may also, upon such hearing and
notice as he may by regulations prescribe, revise or amend any such
allotment upon the same basis as the initial allotment was
made."
61 Stat. 926, 7 U.S.C. § 1115.
[
Footnote 4]
To help effectuate the marketing controls, § 301 of the Act
provides that certain payments will be made to farmers only if they
limit the marketing of sugar cane or beets grown on their farms to
a "proportionate share" of the quantity necessary to fill the
area's quota, plus a normal carry-over. The relevance of this
provision here is that processings of sugar grown within the
"proportionate share" restriction are one of the three factors to
be considered by the Secretary in the making of allotments under §
205(a).
[
Footnote 5]
With respect to the Secretary's comparable function of fixing
proportionate shares for farms under § 302 of the Act, the House
Committee on Agriculture stated:
"In view of the differences in conditions of production
obtaining in the various sugar-producing areas, the committee has
not attempted to specify the exact manner in which the Secretary
shall use production history. It is the judgment of the committee
that considerable discretion should be left to the Secretary to
deal with the varied and changing conditions in the various
producing areas, in order to establish fair and equitable
proportionate shares for farms in such areas."
H.R.Rep. No. 796, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 8.
[
Footnote 6]
The average price per pound of duty-paid raw sugar gradually
declined from 6.98 cents in 1923 to 2.80 cents in early 1932.
United States Tariff Comm'n, Report to the President on Sugar,
Report No. 73,2d Ser., p. 46.
See also Dalton, Sugar, A
Case Study of Government Control, cc. IV, V, especially p. 41; 16
Dept. State Bull. 44.
[
Footnote 7]
It was estimated that the mainland refineries alone had a
capacity in excess of demand of from one-third to one-half.
See United States Tariff Comm'n, Report to the President
on Sugar, Report No. 73, 2d Series, p. 91;
cf. Sugar Institute,
Inc. v. United States, 297 U. S. 553,
297 U. S.
574.