168 ANNUAL REPORT. 



Capt. Blakeley. When Napoleon fell the people of Prance 

 soon learned that it was necessary to protect them by law. They 

 found that the cheap sugar of India could be made and sold for 

 less money than they could make it by the use of beets. But 

 they ''walled up" the industry, gentlemen. It costs to-day eight 

 cents a pound to get sugar into France or into Germany; but 

 you can get it out for a good deal less money. That is the 

 secret. 



Prof. Henry. We hear to-day about some of the sugar fac- 

 tories going to the wall. It is said that after Napoleon's down- 

 fall all of the sugar factories of France went down but one. They 

 gradually started up again and to-day, with a protective tariff, 

 they have between four and five hundred sugar factories in 

 France. We find a parallel in our own history in reference to 

 the business of sugar-making. 



Capt. Blakeley. Sugar cannot be made at the prices at which 

 it is being sold. It is simply like selling wheat at twenty-five 

 cents a bushel. So it is with corn. We cannot get its value 

 when we have to burn corn. It will always cost a certain price 

 to raise it, consequently it must be worth that; and so it is with 

 sugar. The people of Germany are as much in trouble as any- 

 body else about this matter. Their sugar business is with them 

 a national industry; it involves millions of dollars, and there are 

 thousands of people engaged in the business. It is indispensable 

 as a rotation crop. They get a large amount of feed from the 

 beets for their cattle, and they get a large amount of manure for 

 the land. It is almost indispensable as a crop for rotation. 



This is one of the theories of the growth of the sugar interests 

 of this country; and because of the difficulties that are to be 

 overcome there should be an earnest effort to bring to bear all 

 the practical knowledge that can be gained, and all the skill and 

 adaptation of one part to the other that is practicable. I might 

 say here that there is one institution in France, a sugar mill, 

 that has forty -four miles of pipe that carries the juice of the 

 beets from the different farms all around that plantation to the 

 factory. The beets may be grown away over here or away over 

 there, but the product is conveyed to the mill by these pipes. 

 They send out word when the supply is to be sent in from one 

 locality to one man, and then at another time send word to an- 

 other, and so on. It would be utterly impracticable for the 

 teams to get to the factory with the amount of beets which are 

 manufactured into sugar and supply it with the amount of mate- 



