354 
8ugar-Beet Cultivation in Austria. 
the beet requires, and without which the growing of it should 
qot be attempted, improves the land, and enables it, directly or 
indirectly, to give busy and remunerative employment to a con- 
siderable quantity of labour. 
Sugar is now low in .price, and the Austrian manufacturers 
are, like their fellows elsewhere, eloquent as to the meagreness 
of their profits. Those of them who have made contracts for a term 
of years with farmers to supply roots, at rates which now appear to 
them high, demand a revision of prices, and talk of limiting the 
pi'oduction. There is an agitation in Austria, as in England, 
about the lowering of railway rates, and the Government is 
chided for not taking steps for the " development of exports." 
These are all matters into which it would be impossible for 
me to dwell here at any length. The fact remains that for some 
parts at least of Austria the cultivation of the sugar-beet has 
been the mainspring and the mainstay of all agricultural im- 
provement ; and to it is due most of the activity, the progress, 
and the prosperity of the districts which I visited. 
Ernest Clarke. 
