SUGAR 35 



refineries if there is any chance of its being edged out 

 of existence as a superfluity and almost as a nuisance. 

 While the German farmers produce 2| tons of sugar 

 on every hundred acres, British farmers produce 

 hardly any. 



No doubt the creation of a sugar industry will re- 

 quire a great deal of organisation. But agriculture 

 stands to gain enormously by the dovetailing of its 

 seasons into those of various subsidiary industries of 

 which sugar refining is only one. In Germany the 

 employment of part-time agricultural labourers is a 

 much less precarious business than here, both for 

 employer and employed, because the part-timer is 

 always ready for his job, and the job (sometimes in 

 one industry, sometimes in another) is always ready 

 for the part-timer. The arrangement of part-time 

 labour is comparatively easy where all the direct and 

 indirect branches of agriculture are regulated as an 

 organic whole ; it is impossible where subsidiary 

 industries — ^so far as subsidiary industries can be said 

 to exist in Great Britain — fluctuate under absolute 

 freedom of exchange, booming for some years when 

 the markets are favourable, and languishing in other 

 years when the markets are against them. Sugar is 

 such an important element in the food of the people 

 that it is not too much to say that the cultivation of 

 sugar-beet might become a feature of our agriculture, 

 rivalling, if not exceeding, in importance the cultiva- 

 tion of wheat. ^ 



1 In 1913 the wheat we grew was worth £10,240,000, or with its 

 straw about £14,500,000 ; but we imported £16,000,000 worth of 

 beet sugar, either refined or as molasses. 



