CULTIVATION OF THE BEET. 39 



quently, it affords little material for enriching the soil. 

 The beet, on the contrary, is an enriching and cleaning 

 crop. It requires no fallow ; it is the very best known 

 forerunner of other crops ; it feeds multitudes of stock, 

 and, instead of impoverishing the soil, constantly im- 

 proves it. 



In fact, there can be no doubt that the beet crop will 

 be found to be as profitable to the farmer here as it 

 unquestionably has been to the European farmer. 

 The farmers of the west possess many great advan- 

 tages over those of Europe. 



They have a virgin soil prodigiously productive, 

 easily cultivated, and of low cost, and agricultural 

 machinery with which one man will do the work of 

 a dozen. Probably, notwithstanding the high price 

 of labor, there is no other country in which an acre 

 of land is cultivated so cheaply as in the west. 



I have conversed with a great many farmers in no 

 less than twelve of the Northern and Western States, 

 and have found no one who did not say that there 

 would be no difficulty in getting all the beets we could 

 consume for less than four dollars per ton. The im- 

 pression among those farmers generally was, that it 

 would cost from forty to fifty dollars an acre to raise a 

 crop of beets ; some placed it as low as thirty-five, and 

 none over fifty dollars. If these estimates should prove 

 to be correct, the cost of beets, with an ordinary yield, 

 would be from two to three dollars per ton. 



If it be true, then, that beets equally rich in sugar 

 can be raised in the west as cheaply as in Europe, it 

 only remains to inquire if that sugar can be extracted 

 at a profit. 



