88 SUGAR-BEET SEED 



be secured from either Germany or Austria, a 

 trusted agent was dispatched to Russia. When 

 the Russian seed growers learned of the situation, 

 the price of Russian seed immediately rose to 

 three times its usual value and most of the 

 growers demanded full payment for the seed before 

 leaving their shipping stations, which are located in 

 the vicinity of Kieff. Although these stations are 

 6000 miles from the port of Vladivostok, with 

 which they were connected by a single-track rail- 

 way which already was congested with war munition 

 freight and often was closed for weeks to commercial 

 freights, American sugar factories assumed the risk 

 and forwarded a million and a half dollars to Russia 

 without any positive assurance that the seed could 

 be brought out. After months of negotiations and 

 vexatious delays, the seed began to move and all of 

 it reached this country within a year from the time 

 it was purchased. 



The desperate quest for seed brought to mind more 

 vividly than ever before the absolute dependence of 

 the domestic beet-sugar industry on foreign countries. 

 This resulted in the production of an increased amount 

 of home-grown seed in 1915, the planting of a con- 

 siderable area in 1916 and the formation of plans to 



