STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 287 



This country is destined to become one of the most important sugar- 

 producing countries in Europe. The soil, which is a rich, dark loam, 

 produces excellent beets without manure, and is acknowledged to be the 

 best for this purpose in Europe. The number of kilograms of beets per 

 acre is generally very small (twenty thousand), but the richness of the 

 beet is remarkable, nine and frequently ten per cent!, of sugar being 

 obtained. The number of factories in Russia at the present time is four 

 hundred and forty, most of them, however, being of small size. 



In Holland, into which the beet has been recently introduced, the cul- 

 tivation and manufacture appear in the most flourishing condition. This 

 is owing to the fertility of the soil, in which the beet grows to its full 

 size, and retains at the same time its 'full saccharine properties 



The present production of sugar in Holland is about seventy-five thou- 

 sand kilograms. The number of manufactories is ten. 



United States. 



Attempts have been made at different times in this country to estab- 

 lish the manufacture of beet root sugar, with, however, but moderate 

 success. All of these attempts have, with but one exception, been on a 

 small scale, while the industry was still in its infancy, and the prices of 

 foreign sngar were much lower than they are now. or are likely to 

 be again. 



In eighteen hundred and thirty-eight and eighteen hundred and thirty- 

 nine, the "Northampton Beet Sugar Company," of Northampton, Massa- 

 chusetts', made several hundred pounds of this sugar, and succeeded in 

 raising beets of excellent quality and weight, but the enterprise did not 

 prove financially successful. The most complete published account of 

 this attempt is that given by Mr. David Lee Child.* 



This enterprise is also referred to by Mr. E. B. Grant Of the more 

 recent endeavors he thus speaks :f 



" In eighteen hundred and sixty-three and eighteen hundred and sixty- 

 four, the brothers Gennert, of New York, conceived the idea of manu- 

 facturing beet sugar. Mr. Thomas Gennert visited Europe for the pur- 

 pose of studying the methods there employed. Upon his return, the 

 firm selected the prairie lands in the Town of Chatsworth. Livingston 

 County, Illinois, purchased twenty-three hundred acres, erected build- 

 ings, and commenced the cultivation of beets. In process of time they 

 gathered their crop, which, owing to the drought, and also to the unfa- 

 vorable method of planting, yielded only ten or twelve tons to the acre. 

 The beets were of excellent saccharine properties, containing twelve and 

 a-half per cent, of sugar. The heavy outlay required exhausted their 

 means; or, to use their own words : ' We started on too large a scale 

 for our purse, which gave out too soon before the machinery required for 

 successful working was finished; but experience has shown us sufficiently 

 that sugar enough is contained in the beets, and that it can be got out. 

 With our imperfect, or rather incomplete machinery, we extracted seven 

 per cent, in melada. Those beets would average, with complete machin- 

 ery, nine per cent.' 



" The Messrs. Gennert have put their property into a stock company, 



* The culture of the beet and manufacture of beet sugar, 1840. 



f Beet-root sugar aud cultivation of the beet, by E. B. Grant. Boston, 1867. 



