GROWING SUGAR BEETS IN THE BILLINGS REGION. 27 



harvest after this date, but in other years the ground will be frozen 

 so that it is very laborious or impossible to harvest the beets. Allow- 

 ing for some wet or bad weather, it will be seen that beet harvesting 

 is the rush season of the year. 



Although labor at hauling beets is always paid a higher rate than 

 other farm labor in this region, in estimating the cost of hauling 

 the usual rate of 20 cents per hour for man labor and 10 cents per 

 hour for horse labor is used as the basis in this bulletin. For haul- 

 ing beets men get from $50 to $75 a month and board, according to 

 the need the farmers have for labor. 



Beets are hauled in special wagon boxes, which permit the beets to 

 be dumped from the wagon directly into the cars that are to trans- 

 port them to the factory. (Fig. T.) The men do not have to shovel 

 the beets when cars are available, but in many cases the number of 

















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Fig. 7. — Loading and hauling sugar beets. Wagons are specially constructed to dump 

 the load directly into a freight car or storage sheds. 



beets harvested exceeds the quantity that can be stored at the factory, 

 so the beets are piled at the dumps in large piles on the ground. 

 Sometimes 5,000 tons are put into one» pile. These piles are made 

 about 8 feet high and of various widths and lengths. No extra com- 

 pensation is provided for this piling of beets at the dumps. 



Usually one man loads and unloads his beets at the dump, but in 

 some cases the farmer has a man in the field who helps load- the 

 wagons, doing other work while the wagon goes to the dump. 



These studies, made in 1915, show that detailed information with 

 regard to hauling sugar beets was gathered from 305 farms, from 

 which the product of 8,817 acres of beets was hauled, requiring an 

 average of 10.36 hours of man labor and 29.66 hours of horse labor 

 per acre. The cost of hauling was therefore $5.02 per acre, or 47 

 cents per ton. 



