CULTIVATION OF THE BEET. 53 



exceed 5^ cents per pound. My belief is that it would 

 be less, say 4f cents at the outside. But if it cost 5^ 

 cents, and sold at ten, there would still be a profit of 

 ninety per cent. 



After making all allowance for contingencies that 

 I can imagine as possible to arise, I have not the 

 slightest doubt that there can be realized on the manu- 

 facture a profit of at least eighty per cent, on the 

 capital invested. 



In a conversation with a French gentleman, a man- 

 ufacturer of sugar machinery for all parts of the world, 

 and who is also largely interested (and with most 

 favorable results) in the manufacture not only of cane 

 sugar in Martinique, but also of beet sugar in France, 

 in Germany, in Poland, and in Russia, he gave it as 

 his opinion, that the beet was destined to become the 

 great sugar-producing vegetable of the world, for the 

 reason that it can be cultivated in the temperate lati- 

 tudes, in countries of dense population, and conse- 

 quently in close proximity to the consumers of sugar. 

 In his judgment sugar can be produced from it as 

 cheaply in Europe or in the United States as it can be 

 from cane in the West Indies or Brazil. And even if 

 that position were not tenable, the expenses of trans- 

 portation are so great as to render it absolutely certain 

 that sugar produced from the cane cannot compete 

 with beet sugars in the markets of Europe or the 

 United States. 



The "Journal des Fabricants de Sucre " says, that 

 " the season of 1865-6 developed the success of two 

 highly important processes, namely, the immediate 

 carbonitation without defecation of the juice as it 



