THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY. 
137 
ing the area of other crops, it helps all farm values; the beet requires good farming 
and is an educator in thrift and does not rob the soil. 
To labor, the beet-sugar industry offers a new field for employment of both skilled 
and unskilled labor of all ages, and pays a satis- 
factory price for it in money that would other- 
wise go out of the community and out of the coun- 
try. 
To capital, it pays a fair return and under 
proper management should prove an ubsolutely 
safe investment. 
To other industries, the beet-sugar business 
contributes largely. It builds up thriving com- 
munities and gives new life to other industries. 
It is roughly estimated that an investment of 
upward of three hundred million dollars would 
be required to build and equip a sufficient num- 
ber of factories to supply the American market 
with sugar, which vast sum would be distributed 
among the mining, manufacturing, building and 
machinery trades. The annual expenditure for 
labor and materials, such as coal, lime, coke, bag- 
ging, chemicals, oils, etc, would amount to mil- 
lions of dollars. 
To real estate, the beet-sugar industry creates 
value. Chino ranch lands that are now worth 
$100 to $200 per acre were hardly salable at $30 
to $60 per acre before the factory was located 
there. Our attention has been called to a fine 
tract of 30,000 acres of land in California which 
can be ‘‘quietly bought up at $30 per acre and 
after a factory is successfully established will be 
worth at least $100 per acre.’’ We consider this a 
conservative statement. 
SOME CAUTIONS IN THIS INDUSTRY. 
No one state has a monopoly of the beet-sugar 
industry. Some Nebraska farmers have an idea 
that the business wiil be confined to their state 
because it has two factories in successful opera 
tion. Such people have only to read this work 
to be convinced of their error. Moreover, hun- 
CROSS-SECTION OF A 
SUGAR BEBRT. 
A section or cutting down through the 
middle, showing the alternate rings or cylin- 
ders of compact portions and those more 
translucent, the former containing rather 
more sugar, and the latter more salts and 
albuminoids. The Jower_ or smaller part of 
the beet generally has a larger percentage of 
sugar thau the larger upper vert Tilustration 
reduced from Bulletin 27, United States De- 
partment of Agriculture. 
dreds of enterprising communities are anxious to secure beet-sugar factories, and 
many of these will doubtless do so. 
There are plenty of such communities in a dozen or twenty states where the 
farmers are not only ready and eager to contract to furnish any reasunable quantity 
