6 INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE. 



wheat, barley, and other crops. The balance of their beets are grown 

 on other near-by estates, the owners of which, in order to secure the 

 rotating value of sugar beets, are only too glad to produce large quan- 

 tities of high-grade beets and sell them for a fraction over one-half the 

 average price paid for poorer beets in the United States. Their largest 

 contractor furnishes them with 3,000 acres of beets, which average 

 18J per cent sugar, and the price paid per 2,000-pound t : on was at the 

 rate of $3.36, our money, as compared to the average price of between 

 $5 and $6 per top in the United States. 



I will digress for a moment to state that this estate, formerly the 

 property of Maria Theresa's favorite prime minister, is the most 



Eerfectly equipped and managed property I have ever visited. Aside 

 rom the 120-room palace, which in summer is occupied by the 

 Hatvanys, there are beautiful homes for the various managers and 

 superintendents, a small city of workingmeii's houses, innumerable 

 barns of great proportions, machine shops, wagon and blacksmith 

 shops, dairies, electric-light plant, ice plant, and everything else 

 necessary to conduct the estate without calling on the outside world. 

 A private narrow-gauge ^ railway, equipped with 600 cars, taps every 

 field. The estate is equipped with an abundance of the best agricul- 

 tural machinery, including numerous steam plows, all of w r hich is 

 carefully housed. It is stocked with 4,000 dairy cows and work oxen, 

 which produce great quantities of manure, and this is prized as highly 

 and protected as carefully as is the grain, being thoroughly rotted 

 before it is spread on the fields. Every pound of milk is shipped to 

 Budapest. The refuse of the sugar factory is used to feed the cattle, 

 and upon learning that American farmers about many of our beet- 

 sugar factories would not haul the pulp away as a gift, they asked me 

 to look the matter up and see if arrangements could not be made to 

 dry it and sell it to them for a term of years. They raise vast quan- 

 tities of wheat, but never sell a bushel, seven modern flour mills on 

 the estate, with a capacity of 30,000 sacks a day, turning it into flour 

 and leaving the by-products to be fed to stock. The same with the 

 barley; a well-equipped brewery turns it into beer, leaving the by- 

 product for stock food. One can not imagine a more scientifically 

 managed property, where every farthing of profit is secured. 



First. They secure the customary profit in producing raw cereal 

 products. 



Second. By preparing the raw material for the table and shipping 

 nothing but what is ready for direct consumption, they secure the 

 manufacturing profit. 



Third. By Feeding the by-products to their own stock instead of 

 wasting or selling them to feeders, they secure the profit from dairying 

 and fattening cattle. 



Fourth. From their 4,000 head of dairy cows and work oxen they 

 secure an abundance of manure with which to build up the chemical 

 condition of their soil and make it more productive, thus securing 

 another profit. 



Fifth. By operating a sugar factory which slices the beets from 

 50,000 to 70,000 acres of ground, they secure the profit derived from 

 sugar manufacture and also from the feeding value of the resultant 

 by-products. 



Sixth. By growing 3,000 acres of beets, they secure the profits of 

 sugar-beet farming. 



