NO SUGAR FOR SHAKESPEARE 
grown in temperate zones was known. Napoleon was 
chiefly responsible for finding a method of producing 
sugar from beets. During his wars he found his supplies 
of sugar from abroad cut off. He ordered his men of sci¬ 
ence to find some way to produce it at home. The pos¬ 
sibility of getting sugar from beets had already been 
demonstrated, but the development of the idea into an 
industry awaited Napoleon. 
As time passed, the method of producing sugar im¬ 
proved. It has become one of the cheapest of foods. In 
the United States everybody eats his weight in sugar 
every year. The United States consumes five million 
tons of it every twelve months. It would take a freight 
train 1250 miles long to haul this huge amount of sugar. 
The twenty million tons of it that the world consumes 
each year is so large an amount that we cannot im¬ 
agine it. 
Sugar is another gift of the plant world to man, for all 
sugar comes from the sap of plants and, indeed, the sap 
of all plants contains sugar. Sugar cane, the beet, and 
the maple tree give up sugar more readily than others; 
so it is their product that we know best. 
149 
