164 CULTURE OF THE SUGAR BEET. 



of the Mississippi who would care to undertake singly the cultivation of 

 that area, or who would even have the ability to do so. 



The importance of sugar production in the United States makes it 

 worthy of extended encouragement not only by the State governments, 

 but by the national government as well. Beets are produced in France 

 with great profit for the production of alcohol, and the residues from 

 this branch of manufacture have been found almost as valuable for cat- 

 tle food as those from the sugar factory, and by many agriculturists are 

 even preferred. * The apparatus required for converting the sugar of a 

 crop into alcohol is much less costly and extensive than that required 

 in the extraction of sugar. But in this country no special apparatus 

 nor the erection of special works would be necessary on account of the 

 numerous distilleries already distributed throughout the land for the 

 manipulation of cereals. The same apparatus, with very slight addi- 

 tions, could be employed for the manipulation of beets for the produc- 

 tion of spirits, and they could be worked in any quantity, however 

 limited, instead of grain, and when the stock of roots is exhausted, the 

 distiller may then return to his grain. But just here a serious difficulty 

 arises. Beets could not, at present at least, be produced at a cost suffi- 

 ciently low to compete with cereals in this branch of manufacture, and 

 to offset this disadvantage and to induce the culture of the sugar beet 

 throughout the country, I would suggest that spirits manufactured from 

 sugar beetst be made exempt from tax for a term of years to be definitely 

 fixed as to duration, or during this time be subjected to a tax sufficiently 

 low to enable the roots to successfully compete with the cereals, and to 

 cause them to be sought after to some extent in preference to them. 

 The demand thus created would open a market at once, and the culture 

 would, in consequence, be engaged in without delay, at first upon a 

 small scale very naturally, but it would also very naturally become more 

 and more extended until limited by the bounds of the region of success- 

 ful culture, and the latter would at the same time be determined. The 

 difficulty of entering thus into a new enterprise on a large scale, without 

 previous experience, would be obviated, and the American farmer would 

 not be slow to realize the benefits, besides the immediate profit he 

 would secure from his crop, to be found in the improvement of his soils, 

 the increase in the quantity and value of his grain crops, or of his beef 

 or dairy cattle. At the end of the term of years proposed for the reduc- 

 tion of the tax on spirits manufactured from the sugar beet, when the 

 tax would again be exacted and his market thus destroyed, unwilling to 

 lose the subsidiary advantages he has recognized as resulting from his 

 new culture, and seeking new markets for the crop that will have proven 



* This mode of disposing of the crop has also the merit of returning to the farm not 

 only all the nitrogenous compounds in a suitable condition for feeding, but it saves 

 all the mineral matters as well, none being lost in molasses. 



tin order to insure the cultivation of rich races, a provision could be made that no 

 roots be admitted for manufacture under such regulation, except those the juice of 

 which should contain over 10 per cent, of sugar, and have a density not below 1.050. 



