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CHAPTER XII. 



SUGAR BEET. 



THE fact that sugar could be extracted from beetroots, 

 similar to that produced from the sugar cane, was discovered 

 by Marggraf about the year 1747, and Achard produced this 

 sugar on a very small commercial scale, near Breslau, about 

 1799. The blockade of European ports by Napoleon I. gave 

 a great impetus to the beet sugar industry on the Continent, 

 and a trade was then established which has continuously 

 increased, until in 1913 over 8,000,000 tons- almost half the 

 world's total sugar crop was produced in Europe. It was 

 only natural that some intelligent observer in this country 

 should have noticed the remarkable expansion of this industry, 

 as well as its very beneficial effects on agriculture generally, 

 and the Chamber of Agriculture Journal in December, 1869, 

 makes a reference to a small factory for the production of 

 beet sugar which was erected by a milling firm near Chelms- 

 ford about 1832. This appears to be the earliest recorded 

 attempt to make a beginning in this country, and seems to 

 have succumbed because the Government of the day put an 

 excise duty of 30s. or 35s. per hundredweight on " indigenous 

 sugar/" This was approximately the Customs duty charged 

 on unrefined sugar from the East and West Indies, and this 

 action shows that they had no intention of nursing a new 

 industry, although landowners predominated in the House of 

 Commons in those days. The Quarterly Magazine and Revieiv 

 in 1832 contained a more detailed account of what was 

 apparently the same undertaking.* The article in the Chamber 

 of Agriculture Journal, already mentioned, refers to a factory 



* International Sugar Journal, November, 1914. 



