INDIRECT BENEFITS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. ; July 17, 1911. 

 Hon. REED SMOOT, 



United States Senate, Washington, D. C. 



MY DEAR SENATOR : In accordance with your suggestion, I inclose 

 herewith some data which I have prepared on "The increased yield 

 of other crops due to rotation with sugar beets/ 7 a subject of vital 

 interest not only to the people of your State, but to the Nation. 



To handle this subject, it becomes necessary to compare the crop 

 yields of Europe and the United States, and the regrettable feature 

 about it is that such comparison does not contribute to one's national 

 pride. 



A recent magazine article which dealt in glittering generalities w r as 

 put out under the caption, "The United States feeding the world." 

 One of the statements made was that when we shipped our cotton to 

 Europe we sent with it the food products to feed the starving work- 

 men who made it into fabrics and laces. 



One phase of our all too prevalent vulgar boastfulness would be 

 cured if we but realized that Europe, without Russia ("the granary of 

 Europe"), occupying but 45 per cent of our surface area, tills double 

 the number of acres of wheat, rye, barie}^, oats, and potatoes that we 

 till, and from that double area devoted to these five crops their farm- 

 ers harvest lour times the number of bushels that our farmers harvest ; 

 that of these five crops Europe produces more bushels per capita for 

 their 300,000,000 people than we do for our 90,000,000 people, and 

 that during the past 30 years Europe has increased her acreage yield 

 of these five crops 75 per cent, while we have increased ours but 8 per 

 cent. 



In the accompanying data I have attempted to make plain the 

 fact, so well understood in Europe, that the remarkable economic 

 position of that country has been brought about by the introduction 

 of the humble sugar beet, the leaf buds and roots of which in the time 

 of Augustus Ctesar were used as a food -for slaves, and must have 

 been considered very vulgar, since Csesar delighted to compare slack 

 persons with boiled mangel, "betizare" dicebat. 



Although my study of the beet-sugar industry extends over a 

 period of 15 years, during 9 of which I have been secretary of the 

 American Beet Sugar Association, it was not until I began making 

 study trips in Europe that the full value of the industry in its inter- 

 related connection with general agriculture dawned upon me, and 

 since then I have devoted a large portion of my time to a study of 

 this particular feature of the industry. 



Anybody will admit that it would be desirable to produce at home 

 the $180,000,000 worth of sugar we annually import from foreign 

 countries and our island possessions, and turn this vast sum into the 

 pockets of our own instead of foreign farmers and laborers. That in 



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