CULTIVATION OF THE BEET. 77 



EFFECT OF ITS INTRODUCTION INTO THE UNITED 

 STATES. 



The effect of its introduction into the United States 

 would be to produce results correspondingly greater 

 than have attended it in Europe, for here the con 

 sumption of sugar per capita is nearly four times 

 greater, and the value of lands is not a quarter of those 

 in continental Europe, while they are by nature far 

 richer and more easily cultivated. The supply of coal 

 is unlimited. The vast distances over which many 

 farmers are obliged to transport their produce render 

 it oftentimes impossible to dispose of their more bulky 

 crops at a profit. The introduction of sugar-making 

 would give them another and most profitable crop, for 

 which they would have a home market. It would 

 enlarge the local demand for other farm produce by 

 interspersing a manufacturing with an agricultural 

 population, to the great advantage of both. It would 

 go far to change the present wasteful and necessa 

 rily unenduring system of agriculture, and to substi 

 tute for it another, founded upon more correct princi 

 ples a system self-sustaining and improving, rather 

 than suicidal and degenerating. 



The gold value of sugars imported into this country 

 is nearly $80,000,000 per annum. 



The annual consumption of sugar in the United 

 States before the war was over 450,000 tons. 



There is no doubt that within twenty years it will 

 be more than 1,000,000 tons, for with the customary 

 increase of population and the consumption per head 

 that existed before the war, that amount would be re 

 quired. 



