THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



223 



In these days of newspapers. 

 The Right experiment stations, farmers' 

 Wa y- clubs, etc.. farmers are not 



content to go on in the same 

 old way but are ever striving to gain 

 more knowledge in their calling, which 

 is. in reality, a science. All farms are 

 more or less experimental but there is a 

 right and a wrong way to try experiments. 

 Some farmers will dash into an experi- 

 ment with hogs, chickens or cattle with 

 no preparatory study, and if the venture 

 proves to be a failure, as it often does, 

 it is given up for another i- experiment." 

 entered upon in the same haphazard way. 

 Others go slowly, trying a new venture 

 after careful study and giving it a fair 

 trial. On this subject A. K. Boyler 

 writes : " Try something new on the farm 

 each year; not the puffed-up novelties, 

 but watch your experiment station and 

 see what it recommends, and see if it will 

 work on your farm." 



Two-thirds of the world's 

 The sugar is now produced from 



Beet. beets. . rior to 1871-2 the 



world's production of beet 

 sugar had never reached 1.000.000 tons; 

 in the present crop year it is, according 

 to latest estimates. 5,510,000 tons, while 

 the cane sugar crop which in 1871-2 was 

 1.599,000 tons, is in the present year 

 2.904,000 tons. Thus cane sugar pro- 

 duction has scarcely doubled during the 

 period under consideration, while that 

 from beets has more than quintupled. 

 Meantime the price has fallen more than 

 one-half, the average cost in foreign 

 country of all sugar imported into the 

 United States in the fiscal year 1872 

 being 5.37 cents per pound, and in 1899 

 2. 39 cents per pound. 



These facts are shown by a tabulation 

 prepared by the Treasury Bureau of 

 Statistics in response to the demands for 

 information regarding sugar production 

 which have followed the meeting of 

 Congress and the prospective considera- 

 tion of matters relating to the sugar 

 producing islands which have recently 



come into closer relations with the United 

 State. 



No development of the world's pro- 

 duction of food stuffs has been more 

 rapid or striking than that with reference 

 to beet sugar. In 1854-5 the total beet 

 sugar crop of the world was but 182,000 

 tons; by 1864-5 it had reached 536,000 

 tons; in 1874-5 it was 1,219,000 tons; in 

 1884-5, 2,545, tons; in 1894-5, 4,792,793 

 tons and in 1899-1900, 5,510.000 tons. 

 In 1854-5 beet sugar formed 13 per cent; 

 of the world's total sugar crop and in 

 1899--1900 it formed 66 per cent. 



Thus the "sugar producing area of the 

 world has in less than a half century been 

 shifted from the tropics northward and 

 the farmer of the temperate zone has 

 shown his ability not only to compete 

 with the low priced labor of the tropics, 

 but in doing so to reduce by one-half the 

 cost of the article produced. 



"The grain trade of the 

 Our Grain United States " is the title of 

 Trade. a monograph just published 



by the Treasury Bureau of 

 Statistics as the first of a series of studies 

 upon the production and transportation 

 of the great staples and upon the internal 

 commerce of the country. The present 

 article points out the immense increase 

 in the agricultural production of the 

 country, the rapid and continuous west- 

 ward shifting of the area of cultivation, 

 and the changes in the routes by which 

 Western grain reached the Eastern con- 

 sumers and the European markets. The 

 development of the grain production and 

 trade is traced from colonial times to the 

 opening up of the Mississippi route by the 

 purchase of Louisiana, when the shallow 

 barges and later the steamboats descended 

 the Mississippi, and New Orleans shipped 

 grain to New York and Boston. After 

 the completion of the Erie canal in 1825 

 and the settling of the Lake Michigan 

 territory, the great bulk of the Western 

 grain traffic moved eastward over the 

 Lakes and the canal, and New York 



