The Monitor-register., 1897-12-17
A Pen Description of Sugar Beet
Culture in Alemeda County,
California.

situated twenty.four miles south of Oak
land, is the oldest as we'll as the largest
in the State, it having a capacity of eight
hundred tons per day. This was the first
sugar beet mill built in the United States,
having started in a small and crude way
in 1871. The mill has been remodeled
and improved machinery put in year after
year, and from the experience of twenty
six years, and a part of that time run,
ming at a loss, but the last four years has
proved that making sugar from beets was
no longer an experiment but a solid fact,
and that there are millions. in it. Last
year the company enlarged their plant
from a capacity of three hundred ions
per day to eight hundred tons.
l was told that for soil and climate for
sugar beets nothing iuthe State, if in the
world, can equal this. The average
price of land within five miles of the mill
is 5000 per acre. The average yield per
acre is fifteen tons, and the price 81 per
ton, but. the company have contracted to
pay $3.50 for next years crop. A major
ity of the beets are raised on rented land,
the renter paying one-third of the crop,
delivered at the mill. The mill company
will furnish the farmer with seed, imple-
ments and ready cash until the crop is
harvested at 10 per cent. This seems to
be a big interest, but as the farmer sell
dom needs the money for more than five
months it amounts to less thar 5 per GENT.
1t never rains here after the beets are
we'll up until they are matured, and often
not until after they are harvested, the
last of November or the first of Decem.
Der. 1t requires twelve pounds of seed
to plant an acre. The crop needs no
attention after the first cultivation, which
consists of thinning the plants to six
inches apart and pulling the grass and
the small weeds at the same time. AS |
said, it DON'T rain, so the grass and weeds
never interfere with the crop. The rows
are about twelve inches apart, and at
pulling time the tops cover the whole
surface of the ground.
The farmer prepares his ground and
sows the seed. He then let's the contract
out for thinning, wedding, topping, sack
ing and putting the sacks on the wagon
for 81 20 per ton. These contracts are
given to Portuguese, "Japs'' and China
men, who make q business of that kind
of work; but if a man does his own work
his profits will be that much the greater.
The farmers haul their crops from one
half of a mile to five miles to the mill,
and there are two railroads running to
the plant that bring beets thirty miles.
The beets are thrown into sheds three
hundred feet long and forty feet wide.
The centre of the shed floor is two feet
lower than the outside, and in the centre
is a troughsfourteen inches wide and
twenty inches deep, with fall enough to
carry from the shed to the factory. A
stream of hot water deep enough to float
the beets is coursing all the time, and
four men in each shed are shoveling in
day and night, for the mill runs twenty.
three hours out of tWenty-four, and BY
the time the beets reach the mill they are
partially clean. They pass through a
long, half-round trough, where they are
forcea-tAee whole length by a wooden
worm or au~ger-shaped machine, and
dumped into a large wheel resembling
an old fashioned overshot water wheel.
fourteen feet in diameter. The beets are
taken in at the first floor and thrown ont
on the second floor, where an endless
chain; or bucket elevator, carries them
to the third floor, where they go into the
grinder, resembling a corn and cob grind.
or so m UGH used by farmers to grind feed
for their stock. All through this long
and crooked journey the beet is in hot
After the beets are ground they are in
strips about an eighth of an inch
through and three inches long. The pulp
drops down into large iron tanks where
water is forced through it until all
the sugar qualities are removed, then it
drops down to the next floor and is by an
chain carrier hauled away five
hundred feet and emptied into a crib or
pen, to be used for COW or hog feed.
l am told there is no better feed for
cows and hogs when mixed with a little
ground barley or wheat, and cholera is
unknown among hogs that are fed on
beet pulp. This refuse can be had for
the hauling while the mill is running,
and fifty cents a ton when the mill closes.
of farmers bring a load of beets
and take home a load of pulp. 1t will
keep for years, and never gets harder
han the consistency of butter. When
wanted for feed, take a shovel and slice
Town what is needed and leave the bal
intact.
But to return to the mill, after the Juice
eft the pulp-I lost all trace of it. There
re two miles of piping in the building, |
from half an inch to twelve |
inches, and tanks without number and
sizes, and a dozen or more steam
ngines in different parts of the building.
The mill consumes about seven hundred
ons of beets in twenty four hours and
urns out in that time two thousand
of sugar of one hundred pounds
ach, and as fine sugar as l ever saw.
t is put in double sacks, a white cotton
.ck inside and jute outside. l was told
he sugar sells at wholesale for So per
undred.
1t requires fourteen thousand acres of
to run this mill each season. There
re two other mills on this coast, and
st year $25, 900, 900 was paid for sugar
nported to this State for home consump-
on. Next year there will be three more
ills in California. One run by Claus
p~reckles, and one by W. A. Clark, of '
ute, Mont. /
L consider the beet industry will be the :
bonanza for the agricultural
srt of California it has ever had. The
ill employs about two hundred men. L
see by statistics that $500, 600, 900 is 8
I'D annually fyr sugar imported to this a
and if l AN rightly Informed |
ere are eight sugar beet mills in opera. d
in the United States. At the pres .
1t consumption of sugar in the United
;ates it would require eighty mills to !
lpply OF home demands. Ia this
untry He have plenty of land and -,
ore brains and energy than any other r
untry on earth. Then why not make 7