The herald., 1897-04-25
LOS ANGELES FERALD SUNDAY MORNING, AFRn-7s 1897


| thinning the beets 1t is as busy hiv,
| OF industry as one has ever seen. Mex
year the Alamitos factory will take twice
as many beets as this year, and there
will be over 10000 acres in sugar beets
| in this territory. In the beet fields ant
In the factory yard there are not less
than 1900 people employed at good wages
Next year this number will be nearly
doubled, and while the campaign, as they
call a beet season, lasts only four
months, this army of men Is employed
nearly all the time. There Is the ground
to prepare; then the seeding. followed
by thinning and wedding; then pulling
and hauling the crop. with the active
four or five months in the factory.
The factory Is huge building, with its
boiler house. engine house and seed
house outside. The main building is of
brick sides, but all the interior is steel.
The machinery now being set in place
is all of the best modern types, is all
American made, and mostly American
patents 1t is from the beet machine
factory of z. H. Dyer & Co., Cleveland,
Ohio. Mr.. E. F. Dyer is on the spot,
placing the huge appliances where they
belong. Mr.. Dyer is son of the founder
of the beet factory at Alvarado in Ala
media county, the pioneer in the beet su-
gar business. This Mr.. Dyer went into
the machinery business twenty years
ago, and has scarcely given a moments
attention to any other thought since. He
has made two visits to Germany. and is
the inventor of most of the beet sugar
machines in use
Already one can see how the factory
will be operated. The works will re-
Quire 2,500.000 gallons of water per day.
This comes from lot of artesian wells,
80 feet deep. The water floats the beets
from the beet sheds through a cement
siuice, washing them on the way up
Inside they are caught by a sprocket
wheel and carried up on a strainer
where the water and all stems drop off
and are carried away in a main sewer.
BEING dried, the beets are dumped in an
elevator and taken up under the roof
TO the slicer. Thence they go to the
big diffusion batteries. where the juices
are separated from the pulp. The lat
ter goes outdoors to the silo bins to be
used for feed and the juice goes to the
carbonizers to be treated with lime.
After this the sugar goes to the CEN
trifugals. and then to the crystalizers.
ar from this drops into the storage bins.
The sugar all comes from the centrifu-
gals refined. and from the crystailizer
in granulated sugar, ready for the mar
kst.
The value of this factory to the section
is not easily imagined. The crop of
beets is worth gross about $50 per acre.
The $500 acres will pay the farmers who
yrou, tho baatc ion O00 The vroft
the farmers is about $40 per acre, or in
all $4,000. The other $50, 900 goes most
ly for wages. to the hands. These fig
ures must be doubled for next year.
making close to s4OO, 900 paid for beets.
$780, 900 of this profit to the growers and
800. 900 paid to laborers in the fields.
The factory will pay for labor inside
nearly 100000, so that the gross sum
expended will be about 5000, 900 per an
mum. To this add the value of Chino
teets from $500 acres, about S190,000, and
a gross sum of over three-quarters of
million is obtained.
This is not only the best beet land in
he world, it is also the largest body of
beet land ever known. AT Chino the
factory is obliged to seek beets in this
district, and as far away as Ventura.
But the stretch of territory mapped out
above contains more than 10000 acres
CT land suitable for beets that will yield
Is TO 20 tons per acre and test II to 10 de-
grees sugar.
The factory is owned mostly by Messrs.
w. A. Clark and his brother, j. Ross
Clark, both of Butte, Montana. They
are the owners of the Consolidated
Verde copper mine, and are many times
The land and townsite belong to the
Bixby Land company, of which Jotham
Bixby is president, Geo. H. Bixby,
Thomas Flint, Edw F. Dyer and Frank
]. Captain the other directors. Mr.. Cap
itain is secretary, and it is to his interest
in sugar beets and his unflagging ener-
gy in the cause, that the new enterprise
owes the larger part of its success. He
has spent the greater portion of the las,
seven years in a constant effort to estab-
lish a beet sugar factory somewhere in
Southern California e has at last sue
ceeded, and in July he will have the sat
isfaction of seeing the wheels go
round" In two years he will have hun
dreds of happy farmers growing rich
from the crops from these fertile lands.
in one of the most lovely climates IL
the world. He will see town of $500
people around the factory, and he will
keep nearly 81 900, 900 per annum in cir
culation in the district around Los An
geleS