14 



are worthy of note. In this class of goods, as in others, adulteration 

 is caused largely by the demand for cheap articles. A purchaser 

 who pays no more for jelly than the glass which holds it and the sugar 

 it is supposed to contain are worth should not expect a first-class 

 article. 



Little comment is necessary on the canned goods shown on shelf 5 

 of this case. The differences in value which attend the use of differ- 

 ent sirups are not apparent to the eye. Even the quality of fruit 

 employed can not always be determined by appearance alone. The 

 branding of one variety with the name of another and labeling the 

 goods of one locality as coming from another are always reprehen- 

 sible. In this connection the recent court decisions forbidding cer- 

 tain Baltimore canners to label their goods as California products 

 are of interest. 



BEET-SUGAR INDUSTRY, 



By E. E. EWELL. 



The Department of Agriculture, through the Division of Chemistry, 

 which July 1 was raised to the rank of a bureau, has been endeavor- 

 ing to develop our domestic sugar industry for more than two decades. 

 During the last ten years its efforts have been devoted principally to 

 the development of the beet-sugar industry. Since 1897 this industry 

 has grown rapidly and may now be considered to be on a permanent 

 footing, as approximately $25,000,000 are invested in the manufac- 

 ture of beet sugar in this country. This does not include the large 

 amount of capital invested in the growing of sugar beets. 



The development and present condition of the industry in the 

 United States is shown by a collection of statistical tables and photo- 

 graphs (pis. 1 to 40, referred to below), mounted in "wing frames" 

 and designated as No. 5 on the diagram. (See frontispiece.) An 

 effort was made in preparing the collection of photographs to illus- 

 trate as fully as possible all phases of the sugar industry from the 

 production of the seed from which the beets are grown to the market- 

 ing of the sugar. 



The modern sugar beet of high sugar content has been developed 

 and its present high quality has been maintained by careful selection 

 of the mother beets, from which seed is produced. At the beginning 

 of the century the sugar beet contained only 5 to 6 per cent of sugar. 

 The beets delivered to American factories in 1899 contained an aver- 

 age of 14.5 per cent of sugar, while the average of those grown in 

 California was 15.9. Many single beets have been produced which 

 contained more than 20 per cent of sugar, and the product of some 

 entire fields has been found to contain nearly that amount. Until 

 recently the seeds used for sugar-beet growing in the United States 

 have been imported from the seed farms of Europe. The production 

 of high-grade beet seed has now commenced in this country, and a 



