RURAL MANUFACTURES 293 



erected at Bay City by the Michigan Sugar Com- 

 pany in 1898. The United States Sugar Manufac- 

 turers Association reported in 1920 sixteen active 

 beet-sugar factories in the State, at Bay City, Bliss- 

 field, Holland, St. Louis, Marine City, Menominee, 

 Alma, Caro, Carrolton, Croswell, Sebawing, Mount 

 Clemens, Lansing, Owosso and West Bay City. Ap- 

 proximately $22,000,000 are invested in the industry. 

 The output of sugar in the season of. 1920 is 165,899 

 tons. The factories handled in that year 1,24:3,868 

 short tons of beets. The farmers received an average 

 price for beets of $10.08 a ton.^ Of the beet-sugar 

 factories here enumerated, only one is located in the 

 Upper Peninsula (at Menominee), and it derives 

 more than four-fifths of its beets from Wisconsin. 

 The Upper Peninsula product comes almost entirely 

 from Menominee and Delta counties. The excess of 

 sunshine and twilight are factors favorable to sugar- 

 beet culture in the Upper Peninsula, since it aug- 

 ments the sugar-content ; but other conditions seem 

 not to have been equally favorable, and beet culture 

 is a minor industry outside of the Saginaw Valley. 

 Here is a moist climate, a rich clay and clay-loam 

 soil, a water-table close to the surface, and, at the 

 outset, a considerable population of German-Ameri- 

 cans disposed to do hard labor incident to the 

 cultivation of sugar-beets. The presence of the raw 

 material, with abundant pure water of the requisite 

 chemical composition, of limestone and of coal in 



^U. S. Dept. Agr., Monthly Crop Reporter, April, 1921, 

 p. 38. 



