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crop, the amount of sugar in the crop, and the amount of sugar that 
could be gotten out in the factory. These items are given in the 
accompanying tables. The column headed “ Gross weight of 
trimmed beets per acre,” gives the weight of the beets in the same 
condition as they would ordinarily be brought to a factory, i. e., 
with the tops cut off, but no attempt made to remove the dirt that 
naturally sticks to the beet. At a factory, a sample of the beets, 
usually about half a bushel, is taken and cleaned and the calcula- 
tion made as to how much dirt there is in the whole load. 
The column headed “ Sugar in the beet,” represents the char- 
acter of the beet at the time it was analyzed. On the average, this 
was about three days after harvesting. During this time, of course, 
the beets had been drying out, which would tend to raise the per 
cent of sugar in the sample. The first two columns, therefore, 
represent the gross weight of beets and dirt together and the analysis 
of a partly dried sample, in both cases making the crops apparently 
better than they were. To offset this, the column headed, “ Pure 
sugar per acre,” is obtained by multiplying the other two together 
and deducting one-fifth for tare and drying out. It is probable that 
this is a larger shrinkage than would have been made had these 
crops been sent to a sugar factory, but it is deemed best to make 
sufficient reduction so there could be no possible appearance of an 
attempt to exaggerate Colorado’s sugar beet crops. The figures, 
even after the 20 per cent reduction, show magnificent crops, and 
still more so that we can look at them as a slight underestimate. 
The column headed “ Purity,” is the measure of the factory 
value of the sugar that is in the beet. If a lot of beets test 80 
purity, it means that for every 80 pounds of pure sugar they con- 
tain, they also have 20 pounds of impurities that are not sugar. 
These impurities prevent the factory from saving all the pure 
sugar, and the greater the amount of impurity the greater the 
amount of pure sugar that will be lost in the process of manufac- 
ture. The “ pure sugar per acre,” multiplied by the “ purity ” will 
give the “ available sugar per acre,” or the approximate amount of 
sugar that would have been produced from the crops in an ordinary 
factory. It is considered that this measures the true sugar value of 
the crop, and it is on the figures of this column that the order of 
excellence of the various crops is based. 
In the table of averages by counties, another column is intro- 
duced headed “ Factory value per acre.” It is obtained by deduct- 
ing ten per cent tare from the gross weight of the crop and multi- 
plying the remainder by the price paid during 1898 by factories 
where the price is varied according to the quality of the beets. The 
prices used are : 
$3.75 per ton for beets testing less than 14.4 sugar and less than 
78 purity. 
