586 Report of the Department op Field Crops of the 



with great caution and only after the most exhaustive study of 

 the problems involved. 



Doubtless farmers will be invited to invest in beet-sugar fac- 

 tory stock. They will be told not only that the stock will be 

 profitable, but also that it is their duty to share in the risks. 

 They should be very careful in this matter. If the professional 

 boomer appears among them, they should give him a wide berth. 

 He may be resourceful in plausible argument, and it may be hard 

 to resist the fascination of his apparently sound reasoning; but 

 unless the farmers resist his appeals, history will repeat itself, 

 and shares of worthless stock will be very widely distributed 

 among those who cannot afford to suifer the loss. This does not 

 mean that under certain other conditions farmers may not wisely 

 own a share of the factory. If local business men of unquestioned 

 integrity and sound business judgment take the lead in the new 

 enterprise — men who as the directors of banks and other financial 

 organizations have won the confidence of the community by their 

 successful and honorable methods — ^then perhaps the farmer may 

 as safely entrust his money to them in this enterprise as in some 

 others. 



In discussing this matter we should ignore neither home nor 

 foreign competition. The immense factory which Spreckels is 

 erecting in the West to be sustained from cheap western fertility, 

 is a significant beginning. Certainly if beet-sugar production and 

 manufacture are at first unusually profitable we may expect to 

 see this industry rapidly develop to a condition of the usual com- 

 petition. 



Prof. Brooks, of Massachusetts, has recently pointed out the 

 fact that we can hardly compete with the lower wages paid in 

 foreign countries, but he failed to note that the necessary fuel 

 and limestone are much cheaper in the United States than in 

 France and Germany. Probably European producers will have 

 no advantage over us so long as we have a protective tariff, but 

 we know how strong a sentiment there is in this country in favor 

 of free sugar, and political revolutions are likely to make changes 

 in the tariff conditions affecting this commodity. It seems prob- 



