Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1902-01-28
OUR COLORADO LETTER.
THE GREAT BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY IN
THE "aREAT AMERICAN DESERT"

GREELEY, COL, Jan. 1, 1902.
Editor Democrat:
A few days since bought hundred
pound sack of excellent graduated beet
sugar at $3.50, which was manufactured
at Loveland, a little northern Colorado
town about rs miles to the westward of
us and not very far from the base of
Longs Peak. When was child re-
seeing an atlas with map of
the United States, and this region where
they are now turning out the best
of granulated sugar, sometimes more
than a hundred pound sack minute,
was designated as 1.-THE Great American
Desert" / was taught in my boyhood
days that this section must forever re-
main a barren waste, and here we are
now selling this same land turned into
kind of Garden of Eden at one hundred
dollars per acre and often for much
more than that. Verify we have but
very faint idea of what this great coun-
try of ours is capable of doing under the
intelligent labor of man.
To digress, the state of Wyoming is
going, one day, to astonish the world not
only with her gigantic fossils but with
her coal and iron, gold and silver, build
ing stone, soda, gypsum and lubricating
and Illuminating oils and many other
things. Perhaps this century will wit
ness whole nest of surprises as to the
real value of our resources in this great
country of ours.
But, to return to beet sugar, for that
is what started out to write about, it
seems that we are strictly in the beet
sugar producing belt. A certain chemist
once remarked that there is sugar in al
most everything. Said he: "There is
sugar in my old boot" Perhaps there
is no more sugar in sunlit Colorado than
in old Maine; but the great number of
sunny days in Colorado and the apply
ing of irrigating waters to the beet fields
while the sun is still shining, do the
business. The experts tell us how the
sugar is formed in the leaves of the
beets and when everything is promising
for deposition of large percentage of
sugar in the beets, several days of
drenching rains, such as are not uncom-
mon in the middle west, have the effect
of driving nearly all the sugar out of the
beets 80 that they would not be worth
the trouble of putting through the
factories.
Cases have been known where the
Colorado beets have yielded twenty-five
and even twenty-four per cent of sugar.
That is, a ton of the sugar beets trimmed
for the factory and with generous slice
of the top of the beet cut off and retain
ed in the field-a ton of prepared beets
for which the beet farmer may have re-
received five dollars when delivered at
the factory would yield in these ex-
ceptional cases 440 pounds of the best of
sugar, which at the price have just paid
for my sack of sugar would be worth
s24.2O. Verify that looks as if there
were profit in owning and running a
beet sugar-mill. understand that beets
seldom yield less than ~ per cent of
sugar, and at that rate there would be
240 pounds to the ton, worth at the re-
tail price $500.
We have heard of late, rumors that
the captains of the cane sugar industry
were about to commence war upon the
raisers of beet sugar and that there
would be an attempt made to destroy
this promising industry. We shall see
what we shall see.
Now if a man keeps his ears and eyes
open he can hear and see some strange
things about beet sugar making. One
Grand Island, Neb., did a prosperous
business for the first year and then be.
gan to languish and to-day is shut up.
Some say that the farmers would not do
the slavish work of raising beets, kueel.
ing down and thinning them for what
could be got out of it. Others say that
not being in the region of irrigation the
content of sugar in the beets was not
sufficient to make their raising profitable.
There are people who claim to know
who say that the factory at Grand
Junction in the southwest part of this
state is languishing. Some say the soil
is too light, while others say the farmers
cannot make suitable pay out of beet
raising.
There was an excursion to Loveland
this fall, and numbers of our Greeley
farmers went to see the working of this
million dollar plant. 1t was we'll worth
the journey to see the immense pile OF
beets. The sheds where the beets were
unloaded from the farmers wagons, BY
machinery, were full of beets and it was
estimated that the factory was working
night and day on pile of beets ten feet
high, and that would cover ten acres.
This is the first year of the factory at
that place and the machinery was not in
position till late in the season, and SO
the company were offering the farmers
Is cents load to store the beets in their
root cellars. Later it was said that
freezing does not injure the beets or de.
crease their yield of sugar. They will
run till next May. The Denver papers
report that week ago Sunday was the
banner sugar-making day; for six sacks
of sugar were turned out every five
minutes all that day. The perfect sugar
comes pouring out generally at the rate
of sack minute. The beets are push
ed along at great rate by water and the
slicing and pulverizing and extracting OF
the sugar are complicate processes.
This year the Loveland factory is Civ
ing away the moist pulp to the farmers
that they may try the experiment OF
feeding it to domestic stock, but next
year a charge of rs cents wagon load
will be made. 1t is hard to believe it,
but some say that it has fattening quail.
ties. One of our neighbors circulated
among the farmers who were hauling in
the beets, and some claimed that they
were doing we'll and that next year they
intended planting still greater acreage.
One man said that he had planted &c
acres and borrowed the money for the
enterprise of a certain bank; but when
he came to haul all that immense lot OF
beets ten miles to the factory he found
it could not pay to haul so far and gave
up the enterprise, letting the bank take
charge of the business. With all the
diversity of opinion, every town in
northern Colorado wants beet sugar
factory. The great building costing well
nigh million dollars is now fairly be.
gun quarter of mile from where
am now writing. The 1000 acres OF
beets have been contracted for.
Within the week we have been paying
81. 80 per cwt. for bran, while our mill
ers have been trying to buy the farmers
wheat for $l.l5. This taking out the
hull and selling it for more than was
originally given for the same weight of
the entire wheat is a singular per-
Torrance. 1t may be explained in this
way: Corn was failure just to the
east of us in Kansas, Nebraska and
other states, and sells here to-day at
$3.50 a cwt. Hence farmers are driven
to feeding wheat to their teams. But
wheat is not safe feed, and so as to less
or, tho doooar of feadinU n hiram hoo RI