4 :; ' j INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE. 



itself would be a consideration of great economic value to the Nation, 

 but it would be small indeed compared to the indirect benefits to be 

 derived if we produced this sugar from beets, the cultivation of which 

 in Germany, in rotation with wheat, rye, barley, oats, and potatoes, 

 has resulted in their farmers securing from the land which they devote 

 to these five crops an excess annual yield worth $900,000,000 more 

 than our farmers secure from a like area devoted to the same crops, 

 and if from our total area devoted to these five crops our farmers 

 secured as great a yield as do the German farmers our farmers would 

 be richer by $1,400,000,000 a year. 



Fifty years ago Bassett, in his work, Guide Practique du Fabricant 

 de Sucre, said: 



The manufacture of sugar from beets is one of the most important elements of public 

 prosperity. Resting on agricultural progress and the wants of a constantly increasing 

 population, allied by reason of the cattle which it supports with the production of meat 

 and bread, based upon improving cultivation, it renders to modern society the greatest 

 services, at the same time that it attains for itself the highest point of prosperity and 

 glory to which any industry ever had the ambition to aspire. 



Louis Napoleon, when imprisoned at Ham, in 1842, said of the 

 beet-sugar industry in his Analyse de la Question des Sucres : 



It retains workmen in the country, and gives them employment in the dullest 

 months of the year; it diffuses among the agricultural classes good methods of culture, 

 calling to their aid industrial science and the arts of practical chemistry and mechanics. 

 It multiplies the centers of labor. It promotes, in consequence, those sound princi- 

 ples upon which rest the organization of society and the security of governments; for 

 the prosperity of a people is the basis of public order. * * * Wherever the beet is 

 cultivated the value of land is enhanced, the wages of the workmen are increased, and 

 the general prosperity is promoted. 



In another place the same author puts the following words in the 

 mouth of the sugar industry: 



Respect me, for I improve the soil. I make land fertile which, without me, would 

 be uncultivated. I give employment to laborers, who otherwise would be idle. I 

 solve one of the greatest problems of modern society. I organize and elevate labor. 



In 1853, when the French Emperor and Empress came to Valen- 

 ciennes, a triumphal arch was erected, with the following inscription: 



SUGAR MANUFACTURE. 



Napoleon I, who created it. Napoleon III, who protected it. 



Before the manufacture of beet sugar Since the manufacture of beet sugar 



the arrondissement of Valenciennes pro- was introduced the arrondissement. of 



duced 695,750 bushels of wheat and fat- Valenciennes produces 1,157,750 bushels 



tened 700 oxen. of wheat and fattens 11,500 oxen. 



Grant, in his Beet Root Sugar and Cultivation of the Sugar Beet 

 (1867), says: 



I have said a direct net profit of $20 per acre, because it has been found in Europe 

 that there is also an indirect profit on the beet crop in the large increase of crops suc- 

 ceeding it and in the cattle supported by the pulp. Experiments have conclusively 

 proved that lands now yield from two to three times as much grain and support from 

 eight to ten times as many cattle, in the beet-growing districts as they did before the 

 beet was introduced. The great beet-producing districts of France are the grain dis- 

 tricts and the cattle districts also. The three branches of agriculture always coexist. 



If our farmers were made to know that by proper rotation the 

 culture of 40 acres of sugar beets would increase their yield of all 

 other crops on 160 acres from 20 to 80 per cent, you could not build 

 factories fast enough to care for the beets they would furnish. Grad- 

 ually they will find it all out for themselves, but it is a slow process, 



