EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 335 



to our soil and climate, a cash crop, producing a material in large 

 demand but now imported from abroad. 



THE FACTORY. 



To secure to the farmer the benefits of this sugar beet industry, a 

 factory is required, to work up the beets and extract the sugar. This 

 is the most serious problem of the whole matter. It involves an out- 

 lay of capital that to the farmer seems excessive and useless. The 

 manufacturer, to succeed, must have the best machinery that the world 

 can produce, the most labor saVing, the least expensive to operate and 

 the one that will extract the largest amount of sugar of best com- 

 mercial quality from the beets. He is in competition with the best 

 machinery, and highest skill of the race. No old and discarded appara- 

 tus however useful in former years will serve his turn. A first class, 

 up-to-date sugar plant cannot be secured for less than $300,000, add 

 to that $100,000 for buildings and working capital and you have the 

 lowest price for which a successful plant can be established. It is 

 worse than folly to talk about putting up a cheap plant and making 

 sugar in a small way. 



In the second place the factory requires a good supply of rich sugar 

 beets. This supply must be certain year after year. It is estimated 

 that a crop of 3,500 acres of beets will be required each year to prop- 

 erly stock a sugar factory. 



The other requirements of a factory, plenty of good water (2,000,000 

 gallons a day), cheap fuel, plenty of limestone in the immediate vicinity 

 of the factory and finally good railroad facilities, will be looked after by 

 the manufacturers themselves. 



THE FUTURE OF SUGAR BEET GROWING IN MICHIGAN. 



The results secured in growing sugar beets in this State both in 

 1891 and 1897 show that the climatic and soil conditions for their 

 growth in our State are full of promise. Even the results in coun- 

 ties in the upper peninsula, where promising results would not be 

 expected, are surprising, both in the amount of sugar and the purity 

 of the juice. Large sections of the Lower Peninsula show results far 

 in advance of the best beet sugar districts in France and Germany and 

 equal to the best in our own country. The commonwealth holds out 

 her encouraging hand in the bounty law offering a bonus of one cent 

 a pound on beet sugar made in this State, as shown by act No. 48 of 

 the session laws of 1897, which is here given in full: 



