BEET SUGAR 923 



this expensive hand work. ... It cannot be said that any of 

 these newly devised implements works successfully in all soils." 

 In 1912 the Department's report again had to confess that "a 

 really successful beet topping and harvesting machine " was yet 

 to be devised, and that " at present all the operations of pulling, 

 topping and loading are done by hand." 



It follows that the successful growing of the sugar beet calls 

 for a large amount of monotonous unskilled labor. No small part of 

 it is labor that can be done by women and children and tempts 

 to their utilization. Not only does the typical American farm and 

 farm community lack the number of laborers required ; the labor 

 itself is of a kind distasteful to the farmers. " Thinning and 

 weeding by hand while on one's knees is not a work or posture 

 agreeable to the average American farmer. Bending over the 

 rows and crawling along them on one's hands and knees all day 

 long are things that the contracting farmer is sure to object to as 

 drudgery. . . . Our farmers ride on their stirring plows, culti- 

 vators, and many implements." As was remarked by a witness 

 at a tariff hearing, " The thinning and the topping of the beets 

 it is pretty hard to get our American fellows to do, and they 

 prefer to hire the labor and pay for it." 



Anticipating for a moment what will be said in the following 

 paragraphs of the beet-sugar industry of the Mountain and 

 Pacific regions, it may be pointed out how this need of extra 

 labor has been met. The labor situation is instructive not only 

 as regards the beet-sugar industry itself but also as regards the 

 general trend in the United States during the last generation. 



Almost everywhere in the beet-sugar districts we find laborers 

 who are employed or contracted for in gangs - an inferior class 

 which is utilized, perhaps exploited, by a superior. The agri- 

 cultural laborers in the beet fields are usually a very different 

 set from the farmers. 'On the Pacific coast they are Chinese or 

 Japanese. Except in Southern California, where the Mexicans are 

 near at hand, most of the work is done by Japanese, under con- 

 tract ; there being usually a head contractor, a sort of " sweater," 

 who undertakes to furnish the men. In very recent \^ears Hindus 

 (brought down from British Columbia) also have appeared in 



