MICHIGAX BEET SUGAR 375 



The promising results reached in New Jersey, Illinois and Kansas 

 seemed a good foundation for our expectations for the future. But 

 the sugar making in all these states was abandoned when it was found 

 that sorghum was too variable in its content of crystallizable sugar, 

 the relatively large amount of glucose or invert sugar in the juice 

 preventing the formation of sugar crystals in the sucrose present. 



2. Twenty years ago the price for raw or unrefined sugar was 

 eight cents a pound. When the price fell to five cents and refined 

 sugar was sold at six cents a pound, the manufacture of sorghum 

 sugar did not pay. 



BEET SUGAR. 



Failing to secure the desired results with sorghum the chemical 

 department turned its attention to sugar beets, and in 1S90 the board 

 of agriculture authorized the importation of 800 kilograms (1.760 

 pounds) of seed of the best varieties of sugar beets for experiments at 

 the college and for distribution among the farmers of our State for trial. 

 The varieties imported were Klein Wanzlebener, Vilmorin Imperial, 

 Austrian Wohauka and White Silesian. These seeds w^ere given out 

 to farmers in all parts of the lower peninsula, with directions for plant- 

 ing, cultivating and harvesting; and a request for reports of the trial 

 and specimens of the beets for analysis. Four hundred farmers received 

 the seeds. Of these 228 reported results and sent beets for analysis. 

 These reports came from 39 counties in our State. 



The results of these trials were most gratifying. The average of 

 sugar in the beet exceeded 13 per cent with a purity of the beet juice 

 above 80 per cent. This shows the beets of our State of excellent 

 quality for making sugar, amply justifying the large expenditure re- 

 (piired in erecting and equipping a sugar factory. This was just the 

 information that any conser\'ative business man would want before 

 he would consider the question of building a sugar factory. It was the 

 want of such data that prevented capitalists from availing themselves 

 of the bounty law of 1881. 



The seed thus sown did not at once spring up into a harvest of fac- 

 tories. It seems to take time for such information to reach the mass 

 of our people, but in 1897 the Dudley bill to promote the sugar indus- 

 try in our State was introduced in the legislature when the results of 

 this work at tlie college came into remembrance and seemed to i)ro- 

 mote the passage of the bill. A committee of the House of Kepresent- 

 atives invited me to address the house on this subject. 



I complied with the request, and to place the matter in a clear light 

 as related to the growth of beets in different parts of the vState. a 

 large chart was susi)ended in the hall sliowing by counties (39) the num- 

 . ber of experiments in growing sugar beets, the variety of beet, kind of 

 soil, the ])er cent of sugar and the purity of the juice. At the same 

 time sani|)]es of cane, beet and sorghum sugars were exhited. mounted 

 in such way that their i)liysi('al projierties could be directly compared. 



The capacity of so many counties in our State to produce sugar beets 

 of high (]uality for making l)eet sugar made a strong impression upon 

 our legislators and th(\v passed an act giving a bounty of one cent a 

 pound on all sugar made fiom beets grown iu this State. 



