26 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
“ Tlie machinery, part of which came from the sugar factories at Fond chi 
Lac, Wisconsin, and Chats worth, Illinois, and the rest from Chicago, New 
York and Philadelphia, cost, delivered at Black Hawk, nearly twenty-eight 
thousand dollars. The entire establishment being valued at $35,000. 
“ About one hundred and eighty acres ’were planted to beets last spring. 
Owing to the drouth only one hundred and sixty acres were good. The 
average crop per acre w'as ten tons. The factory commenced operations one 
week ago. It employs two gangs of hands—about forty-four in all, who 
keep the machinery running day and night—twenty-two lioursmut of the 
twenty-four. About one ton of beets an hour can be manufactured there 
when everything goes well. The average product of the beets is twelve 
per cent, in sugar. We have been shown a specimen which is pronounced 
a good quality of B. sugar, as sweet, so far as we can discover, as the pro¬ 
duct o£ the cane, and worth 13 cents at wholesale in Chicago. 
“ The company has 1,500 tons of beets now, but owing to the fact that 
the beets will grow in the spring, and rapidly deteriorate in value, it is 
likely that there will not be sugar enough left in them after the last w r eeks 
in April, to pay for working. The w r ar prevented the company from getting 
machinery in Germany, and therefore it was impossible to start the factory 
sooner than they did. The operations the last season have demonstrated 
that beets can be raised ; that they contain a large percentage of sugar free 
from foreign substances. The material problems have been solved. 
“ The company has sent to Germany for four thousand pounds of seed, 
enough to sow five hundred acres to beets this season. It costs twenty-five 
cents a pound delivered here. They are going to put it all in, and com¬ 
mence sugar-making as soon as the beets are ripe next fall. The men who 
own the stock are shrewd, practical and earnest. They have gone to work 
right, and we believe they will show a bank account eventually which will 
set at rest all question concerning the profit to be gained by this sugar¬ 
making business in our state. 
“ The president of the company is John Sclmeller, secretary, John Wag¬ 
ner; treasurer, H. Oclisner; superintendent, William Wefferling. The three 
other directors are Adolph Spreclier, G. Baumgartli and M. Meider. There 
are thirty-four members in the company.” 
TOBACCO. 
The true habitat of this plant is farther south; the climate 
of the Northern States being only adapted in general to the 
production of an inferior article, for smoking purposes. 
Of the 434,209,461 pounds produced in the states and ter¬ 
ritories in 1860, only 23,814,248 were grown in the northern 
states. Virginia and Kentucky together produced more than 
half the tobacco grown in the United States. 
