The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-11-20
ELECTRIC GROWN SUGAR BEETs
Latest Discovery in that Growing In
dustry-Sugar More than Doubled.
Amherst, Mass, Letter in PHILADELPHIA


Amherst, Mass, Letter in Philadelphia
Times.
Scarcely has the sugar beet been intro
duced in this country before electricity is
that German growers could only get Is per
cent. OF sugar from are made to yield % and
80 per cent. That is the latest discovery in
the sugar beet industry that is now entering
upon successful career in this country
and the Importance of it can scarcely be
oyerestimated, coming, as it does, just
all the State experimental stations are is
suing bulletins. advising farmers to plant
sugar beets instead of so much corn and
wheat 1t has just been determined by the
national government that the manufacture
of beet sugar is possible in the United
States, and that an industry which means
an increase of tens of millions of dollars to
the countryS wealth can be built up there
by. Now, with the discovery of the value of
electricity in increasing the sugar percent
age of the beers we may soon be able to
make all our own sugar, and at less cost
than in Germany or the tropical countries.
The use Of electricity in increasing the
percentage of sugar in the beets is still
small and largely experimental but the re-
suits are so highly satisfactory that there
is no question that means will be found to
apply 1t on a large scale to beetS in field.
In fact a scheme is already planned for
applying electricity to fields of beets that
the ordinary farmer cultivates. This is by
the geomagnettfere, which practically
makes use of atmospheric electricity at no
apparent cost to the farmer after the initial
expense of installing the farm has been in
vested.
At the government experimental station
at Amherst this new invention has been
tested with great success.
Long before this was known by scientists
here and abroad that atmospheric cleo
tricity greatly stimulated plant, fruit and
flower growth, but there was no practical
way of collecting and utilizing this cleo
tricity. For number of years now the
scientists at the stations have been expert
menting with various systems of electro
culture, but without apparent success until
recently. The geomagnetifere makes use
only of the electricity that is always pres
ent in the atmosphere. and distributes it
among the plants to hasten their growth.
In the center of the electric garden pole
forty to fifty feet high stands, surmounted
by a bristling array of copper spikes These
spikes form the electric collector, and they
are insulated from the pole by q porcelain
spikes as the French call 1t, collect the at
mospheric electricity day and night and
conduct ii by a copper wire to a network
of wires laid under the soil at a depth of
five or six feet.
This Is the simple method by which the
atmospheric electricity is to be applied to
the sugar-beet fields. One pole such as de-
scribed furnishes sufficient electricity to
by multiplying them a field of any dmen-
sion could be installed at very little ex-
pense. According to this method there Is
no expense of generating the electricity by
work in electroculture than the current
generated by the ordinary expensive
method
A plot of ground at the experiment sta
ton has been experimental with for several
seasons now, ana by the use of the geomag-
netifere the production has been just
doubled. Besides the geomagnetifere an or
nary dynamo supplies electricity to another