14 INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE. 



The main reason why we produce but one-half to two-thirds a8 

 many bushels of grain per acre as does Europe is because, with rare 

 exceptions, our American economists have failed utterly to recognize 

 the beet-sugar industry as the father of modern scientific agriculture, 

 the very fountain head of inspiration from which the science sprang, 

 the great "normal school" of agriculture which trains the indifferent 

 farmer to be an expert farmer, because of the fact that sugar beets 

 form the only important agricultural crop which, unless the price 

 per ton be exceedingly high, refuses to return a profit or even expenses 

 when farmed in a slip-shod manner, and the superior methods which 

 the farmer is forced to apply to beet culture gradually are applied 

 to the production of other crops and finally are adopted by neighbor- 

 ing farmers, even though they raise no beets. 



It was beet culture that forced European farmers back to deep 

 plowing, compelled them to clear their fields of weeds, caused them 

 to adopt a scientific system of crop rotation, led them to devise new 

 and better implements, doubled their stock-carrying capacity as well 

 as their manure, and brought them to a better realization of the value 

 of barnyard manure, as well as of commercial fertilizers, and as a 

 result what were formerly the "worn-out soils of Europe" now are so 

 productive as to make our "virgin soils" seem barren in comparison. 



While American economists have failed to recognize the sugar beet 

 as the father of modern scientific agriculture, there are some few who 

 realize the great indirect advantages to be derived from the culture 

 of beets, but even they have failed to capitalize and put in concrete 

 form these indirect benefits in order that our people might realize 

 the enormous wealth which would accrue to the Nation by deriving 

 our sugar supply from horne-grown beets. As In teaching the farmers 

 the stress has been laid upon "so many tons of beets per acre at so 

 much per ton," so in teaching the people the main stress has been 

 laid upon keeping a hundred or two millions at home each year by 

 producing our sugar at home instead of importing it, almost uni- 

 versally overlooking the far more important and valuable indirect 

 benefits. 



Having failed to impress the farmers with the rotation value of 

 sugar beets and the enemies of the industry having spread broadcast 

 the erroneous statement that sugar-beet culture injures the soil 

 just as in the inception of the industry an English society offered 

 Achard first $30,000 and then $120,000 if he would declare his process 

 a failure, and finally induced Sir Humphrey Davy to publish a work 

 on beet sugar in which he declared it was far too sour for consumption 

 the average American farmer has been slow to engage in beet culture, 

 even at prices for his product ranging from 25 to 80 per cent in excess 

 of the prices paid for richer beets in Europe. In establishing 334 

 beet-sugar factories in as many localities in France in 2 years, 

 Napoleon opened 334 schools of scientific agriculture, while in the 

 33 years since the establishment of our first successful beet-sugar 

 factory we have created but 66 such schools, concerning which the 

 present Secretary of Agriculture says: 



Every sugar-factory management in this country must necessarily call to its aid a 

 thoroughly scientific and practical agriculturist, and under him a corps of assistants, 

 equipped and conversant, not only with cultivating sugar beets, but familiar with 

 methods of culture, fertilization, drainage, rotation, and all the necessary scientific 

 knowledge to produce successfully all kinds of crops indigenous to the particular 



