The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-11-01
THE PASSING OF A CRAZE.

TIE PASSING OF A CRAZE.
Minnesota has had her experience in
the socialistic use of her power to tax
to induce her farmers to engage in a
new line of industry, and her capital
lists to invest their money in an unac-
customed channel, and should, from
the utter failure, learn a lesson that
will bring her profit hereafter if she
apply it. Fortunately the venture in
sugar beets and beet sugars has not
been very expensive. Five thousand
dollars were appropriated for buying
seeds, about half Of which was spent,
and some 10 per cent of the seed was
bought by farmers or those who
thought farmers would buy them, the
remainder Of the seed remaining on
hand. We beg to suggest, in this con-
nection, that, as the secretary of agri-
culture intends to invest heavily in
beet seed for next springs distribution,
the state tender him it's stock at cost.
Aside from the loss by the state there
are numbers of farmers about the state
who, on the strength OF representa-
tons of the erection Of factories, plant
ed quite extensively, and who have the
consolation rendered them that beets
are good feed for cattle. They are long
on beets and short on cattle, however.
If Minnesota went crazy there were
localities in Wisconsin that went daft.
One of these was MERRIAM. The pro-
motors went there early with their
brilliant figures Of profits for every
body if farmers would but go to rails
ing sugar beets. Their company was
organized and promised to erect the
plant in time to work this years crop
There were the usual vague capital
lists behind them who did not care just
then to have their names known, but
whose cash was ready if suitable terms
could be secured. Contracts were
wanted from farmers to plant specified
quantities of land for a definite number
of years. and q bonus of a site, at least,
was asked. The county commissioners,
holding title to a large quantity Of
land forfeited for non-payment Of
taxes, voted to donate 10000 acres to
the company to be used as a site.
on which the company proposed to
plant beetS so as to insure against neg
lect or failure on the part of the con-
tracing farmers There was great re-
Joicing in the little burg, and real es-
tate took on a perceptibIe activity in
view of the coming Of this great indus
try. The local papers devoted much
space to it and doomed it right roy
ally.
But the company, like the one that
was to plant a few millions in similar
factories in Minnesota, failed to ma
terialize. The capitalists who were be-
hind it never appeared, and the suspi-
cion prevails that the promoters were
only men of that shrewd class who live
by their wits and get living through
the want of wits in others. The enter
prise is abandoned for this year." but
there are lots of Jackson county farm
ers who have far greater quantity of
beets than their cattle can consume
and who are looking for some one con-
nected with the company to whom
they can make delivery of beets and
collect the 81 a ton promised. Mean
While one finds in some of our socialis-
100000 which is spent abroad annually
in the purchase Of raw beet and cane
sugar with g, stupendous demand that
the government do something to cause
this sugar to be made from beets grown
on our own farms in order that all
these millions may be kept at home.
Probably as long as society and poll
ties are t1nctured as strongly with state
socialism as now, we will have recur-
rences of sugar spasms such as was
that of this year; but the experience
had will not popularize them. We can
raise tbs beets and refine them, of
course. Cur soil and climate produce
beets with the requisite saccharine
strength. That much there is of solid
result from this spasm. But conditions
will have to change very much on the
farms before our farmers will engage
in beet growing. One need only ride
through the state and see the waste
now in the corn fields to realize how
difficult it will be to induce our farmers
to go into the intensive farming re-
CURED by beet culture.