88 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



more attention than one that brings $8 to $15, and the most serious 

 obstacle to the development of the industry is, no doubt, the extreme 

 scarcity of the farm laborer. 



The experience of sugar factories in other states has demonstrated 

 beyond contradiction that the establishment of the sugar industry attracts 

 farm labor which is generally available for other crops than sugar 

 beets. In general these are employes of the packing house, the heads 

 of which families are employed during the winter in the cities 

 and gravitate to the fields in search of employment for themselves and 

 families during the summer. 



You will understand that in the growing of beets there is certain 

 hand labor required. First the beets are drilled in rows from 20 to 

 24 inches apart at the option of the grower. The drill used plants 

 four rows at a time using from 15 to 20 pounds of seed per acre. Upon 

 their development to the fourth leaf they are blocked and thinned so 

 that one plant stands by itself about 8 or 10 inches apart in each row. 

 In the meantime a one horse cultivator cultivating two rows at a time 

 is used to keep down the weeds between the rows. The cultivator is 

 used until the leaves lap in the rows. After the blocking and thinning 

 is done the field is hoed and later in the season is gone over a second 

 time with the hoe, killing the weeds that are left. After the beets are 

 matured a beet lifter lifts them from the ground and the hand labor 

 contractor tops the beets, throws them in piles and covers them with 

 the tops and they are ready to deliver to the factory. When properly 

 covered, ordinary frosts do not hurt the beets and thousands of tons 

 of frozen beets are made into sugar every year. 



You will understand that between these operations the labor con- 

 tractor has considerable time when, as practice shows, he is engaged 

 by the farmer to assist in other work. Often these families locate in the 

 immediate vicinity of the factory. Of some 60 families brought to the 

 Waverly factory this year about 20 per cent have become permanent 

 residents, and the tendency is, as I have intimated, the gradual drift- 

 ing to the beet section of the necessary farm labor. I might say that 

 this hand labor we contract for $20 per acre to those knowing a sufficient 

 number of acres to warrant the employment of a family. I naturally 

 drift toward the cultivation of the beet, but I suppose you want to 

 hear something about the sugar itself. 



"Sugar is one of the most recently acquired, the most rapidly increas- 

 ing and one of the most important articles of diet. From its earliest 

 mention until the time of Queen Elizabeth sugar was used only in the 

 arts and sciences and was sold at about $1 per pound. The four 

 decades following the issuance of a decree by the first Napoleon ap- 

 propriating one million francs for experimental work in connection with 

 the development of the sugar beet were only important in increasing 

 the quality, for in the year 1840 95 per cent of the world's sugar was 

 made from cane." About one million tons were used in 1840. Since 

 1840 the increase in consumption has amounted to 150 per cent per 

 decade and now amounts to 12,000,000 tons, 60 per cent of which comes 

 from beets, and the people of the world annually expend $1,250,000,000 

 for sugar. 



