Deterioration Sugar Beets Due to Nitrates 2 3 
beets in regard to their sugar content were fully average beets for 
the season, but scarcely more than that. We do not know how the 
juices of these beets worked in the factory. I know that beets of 
the same average percentage of sugar and apparent coefficient of 
purity gave about seven and one-half percent of molasses when 
worked in a well appointed factory and I think it perfectly safe to 
assume that these beets gave about the same. One of the questions 
is, can we by the use of any particular fertilizer or combination of 
fertilizers obtain better results both for the grower and the factory? 
If we could accomplish all that we wish we would of course have a 
better tonnage, a higher percentage of sugar and early ripening beets 
that would keep well and work at the lowest possible cost in the fac¬ 
tory. The tonnage, however, is apt to continue variable and the 
average low, owing to a number of factors, including the grower 
himself and his lack of means to provide himself with proper imple¬ 
ments for the cultivation of his crops, in short, owing to the limita¬ 
tions imposed in many cases by poverty and the lack of knowledge. 
The questions which I proposed to study pertain rather to the fac¬ 
tory than to the growing of the beets or to the grower, i. e., why do 
the beets remain green? Why are they so low in sugar? And why 
do they produce so much molasses ? 
A few years ago the beets produced on these same lands were 
not low in sugar (see table page 14 for percentage of sugar in crop 
of 1904) ; the percentage of sugar, on the other hand, was 
extremely good, but I do not know how the working of the beets 
then compared with their working in more recent years, and it would 
be very difficult for technical men in the factory to judge of this, be¬ 
cause of the improvements in the factories made from year to year 
as the result of each campaign's lessons and also in methods and 
details of technique. Each year’s problems have become more diffi¬ 
cult but have been met by improvements in the factory and in their 
practice till the factory of today is a very different plant from the 
initial one established ten or twelve years ago. The beets, then, have 
deteriorated from a sugar content of 17.5 to 14.5 or H- 0 percent 
and in some sections almost as low as 13.0 percent. The cause must 
be a general one, for the very good reason that the effect is general. 
There are alwavs fields of good beets but the factory average is too 
low, which increases the cost of working the beets and makes the 
grower suspicious and discontented. The grower is a difficult per¬ 
ron to convince that there are big problems to be solved which in¬ 
volve him and the factory alike and which are not of any mans 
making, but such are the questions which I have mentioned, i. e., 
why are the sugar beets of large sections slow in maturing and poor 
111 quality, or putting this question differently, why has the average 
beet of recent years been so poor in sugar and why has it produced 
