ITS HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT 85 



and five German growers, with whom advance con- 

 tracts were placed for several years for a given quantity 

 of seed per year, to be delivered as required and paid 

 for in the usual course of business. With the out- 

 break of war in Europe, all was changed and ever 

 since August, 1914, the question cf securing an ade- 

 quate supply of sugar-beet seed has been the uppermost 

 thought in the minds of domestic beet-sugar producers. 

 It was a particularly unfortunate time to be cut off 

 from the usual seed supply, as seed stocks in this country 

 never before had been so low. The average New York 

 wholesale price of granulated sugar for the year 1913 

 had dropped to 4.278 cents per pound, the lowest in 

 history, and in that year Congress had provided that 

 the import duty on foreign sugar should be abolished 

 May i, 1916, which would still further lower the price 

 of the product. Discouraged at the gloomy outlook, 

 company managements had allowed their seed supply 

 to decline and when war was declared and the price 

 of sugar immediately began to recover, some beet 

 sugar companies did not have a bag of seed on hand 

 for their 1915 planting, others had only a small supply, 

 only a few were well provided. The quantity of home- 

 grown seed was negligible and without seed the fac- 

 tories would remain idle. 



