58 



THE SUGAR INDUSTRY. 



tons, while the remaining 1000 acres made about 14 tons per acre of trimmed beets 

 delivered at factory. At $4.25 per ton, the farmers got nearly $162,000 for the crop, 

 from which was made nearly 7,500,000 Ibs of refined granulated white sugar. Com- 

 pared with the previous years the following 



TABLE SHOWS THE PROGRESS OF THE INDUSTRY IN UTAH. 



Acres of beets grown. 



Tons of beets produced, 



Average yield of beets per acre, tons, 



Per cent of sugar In beets, 



Purity of sugar, per cent, 



Crude sugar per acre, Ibs, 



Pure sugar per acre, Ibs, 



Began making sugar, 



Finished making sugar, 



Days in operation, 



Estimates added by the author as matters of interest. About 45,000 tons of beets were worked in 

 1896, for which $4.25 per ton was paid, or a total of about $190,000; paid for labor at factory about $35,000, 

 for coal $30,000 and for other supplies $25,000. 



The methods of manufacture have practically reached the same degree of perfec- 

 tion in the successful factories of this country as they have in Europe, showing that 

 the essential factor for the success of the beet-sugar industry of America is the beet 

 root itself. The factory at Lehi, Utah, was the first one to be planned and constructed 

 by Americans and equipped throughout with American machinery. It certainly has 

 many features of excellence to commend it over the European factories. The machin- 

 ery of itself is more effective in many ways, and its arrangement is such that there is 

 a saving of at least one-fourth the number of hands required in a European factory 

 of the same capacity. During our campaign of 1895, out of which 113 days were oc- 

 cupied in cutting and working beets, it worked an average of 337i tons per day, with 

 a factory of only 300 tons guaranteed capacity. As appears from the table above, the 

 length of a beet-sugar campaign is necessarily limited to a few weeks after the har- 

 vesting period, for the beets cannot be kept very long without so deteriorating as to 

 be unprofitable for manufacturing purposes. The total yearly expenses, therefore, of 

 an investment of from one-half to three-quarters of a million of dollars, have to be 

 made during a campaign of 90 to 110 days. 



The engravings herewith, from photographs taken especially for this work, give 

 an admirable insight into this Utah enterprise. It was projected by men of Utah, 

 who furnished all of the $600,000 invested in the plant, with its 1000 acres of land, 

 with silos and pits for pulp and yards for feeding it to stock. Many shares in the 

 factory are owned among the farmers, and it is in that sense co-operative. The two 

 principal buildings are entirely of brick, the walls being two feet thick, the founda- 

 tion laid deep, and the piers sustaining the main weight of the machinery being solid 

 masonry resting on bed rock. The main building is 180x84 feet, three stories 

 high. The annex is 184x60 feet. In the latter building are contained ten 

 horizontal tubular boilers, with a generating capacity of 100 horse power 

 each; twenty large char-filters, char kiln with all the necessary apparatus for 

 revivifying the bone charcoal, and the lime kiln, which treats about seventeen tons of 

 lime rock each 24 hours, the carbonic acid gas having to be retained from the lime, as 

 it is necessary in the manufacture of sugar. All the ground floors are solid concrete 



