A VISIT TO A BEET-SUGAR FACTORY 79 



drawn by horses, or oxen, or by a horse and an ox in 

 double harness, bring hither the roots that have 

 travelled by train to a near-by station. For a few 

 minutes we watch the beet being thrown up into heaps ; 

 then we pass along a narrow path, hedged in by great 

 walls of neatly piled- up roots. 



We emerge on to the side- walk of a canal. A barge 

 is discharging its cargo of beet. In the stern, a mother 

 is crooning to her baby, preparing a meal the while ; 

 and it is quite evident that she has already done a good 

 day's work, for a clothes-line propped up over the 

 whole length of the boat is festooned with a variety 

 of drying garments. In the bow stands a painted 

 barrel, surrounded by a medley of mops, pails, 

 shovels, and cans. The barge's capacious middle is 

 still three-parts full of beetroots ; in their midst are 

 eight men, working in gangs of four. Each man is 

 armed with one of those specially designed forks 

 having ball-ended prongs, such as I told you were used 

 in the fields. The roots are scooped up on the forks 

 and thrown into a chute on the canal bank ; through 

 a small opening they tumble, with a splash, into a 

 gutter, along which they float to the factory. Some- 

 times the men unload facing the chute, but at intervals 

 they turn their backs thereto, and throw the roots over 

 their shoulders. And if the factory is too busy to 

 deal with the contents of all the barges as they arrive, 

 the beets are transferred to the yard in baskets. But 

 beet-sugar factories work day and night to turn the 

 whole crop into sugar before the frost comes. 



We now walk over to the factory and watch the 

 scenes that are being enacted immediately without 

 the building. The loading of pulp — the remains of 



