12 INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE. 



the money value of the German's larger crop is less per acre than is 

 the smaller yield of the American farmer, yet German farmers pro- 

 duce 15,000,000 tons of beets annually, while American farmers pro- 

 duce but 3,500,000 tons. On the other hand, German farmers produce 

 30.5 bushels of wheat per acre to our 15.8 bushels and the price per 

 bushel is higher in Germany than it is in the United States. Not- 

 withstanding these facts we export $119,000,000 worth of wheat and 

 wheat flour and import $180,000.000 worth of sugar, while Germany 

 exports $50,000,000 worth of sugar and imports $65,000,000 worth of 

 wheat. Considering the fact that there is no crop grown the yield of 

 which is increased by preceding it with a wheat crop and that there 

 is no crop grown the yield of which is not increased by preceding it 

 with a beet crop, are the Germans wise in importing wheat and 

 exporting sugar, or are we wise in importing sugar and exporting 

 wheat ? 



When we import 95 or 96 sugar, we are importing a product on 

 which practically all of the labor has been performed in a foreign 

 country. To melt and recrystallize this sugar and prepare if for 

 the table contributes but little to American industry. In refining the 

 3,148,818 short tons of raw sugar we imported and consumed last 

 year there accrued to American industry in office expenses, brokerage, 

 labor, fuel, bone black, bags, barrels, and all other supplies $6.48 per 

 ton, or $20,404,340, while in producing but 511,840 tons of refined 

 sugar from Am eric an -grown beets there accrued to American industry 

 $38,388,000, on the basis of 3.75 cents per pound average cost. To 

 import all our sugar and merely refine it in this country would con- 

 tritute but $22,842,000 to American industry, while to produce the 

 same amount of sugar from American-grown beets would contribute 

 $274,547,000 to American industry. 



That we have an abundance of sugar-beet land on which to produce 

 our sugar is shown by a report of the Secretary of Agriculture, in 

 which he states that if but 1 acre in 50 of our well-defined sugar- 

 beet area were planted to sugar beets once every four years it would 

 produce all the sugar we now purchase from foreign countries, and 

 thus would return our farmers $125,000,000 a year instead of 

 $21,000,000, as at present. 



We are said to "feed the world," but with only 45 per cent of the 

 surface area of the United States, Europe, without Russia, produces 

 twice as much wheat and oats, three and one-half times as much 

 barley, seven times as much sugar, twelve times as many potatoes, 

 and twenty-five times as much rye as is produced in the United States, 

 notwithstanding the fact that we lie in the same latitude, have a 

 superior agricultural climate, virgin soils of greater natural richness, 

 and that her soils have been cropped for centuries. 



While the United States often is represented as " feeding the 

 starving hordes of Europe," the truth is that their rehabilitated 

 soils, even excluding Russia, the " granary of Europe," produce 

 more bushels of the five crops of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and pota- 

 toes per capita of their population than we produce in the United 

 States per capita of our population. 



As compared to Europe, we have richer soils, a better agricultural 

 climate, more live stock to produce the fertilizer, more and better 

 farm implements and machinery, a more extensive, scientific, and 

 expejasive Department of Agriculture, presided over for the last 14 



