The Pickens sentinel-journal. (Pickens, S.C.) 1903-1906, 1903-04-23

eyeryb body said SO. And | CAV
the land of the Michiganders III
3 cold shake. .,.,s
That was eighteen years ago
i Recently / went over that 90 m
4 route again. This time + was dis
tpibutiDg the East Aurora clio
quence. I epoke at Lansing, Kala
!, mazoo, x Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Care
Saginaw Bay City, Owosso an,
Alma At each place the siz, o
the audience was limited by tn,
capacity Of theShouse. Talk abou
your paimy days of the Now En-
gland Lyceuml AtlQwosso, for in
stance, there were fifteen hundred
people in a church that was de.
signed to seat thousand. The
people were. we'll dressed, appre.
olatllye, intelligent and prosperous
In each- town I found the streets
paved, new brick blocks we're being
built, there were trolley lines, pub.
lic libraries, water works, electric
plants, high schools and savings
banks. looked for the lumber
mills, but they were not there.
Span-new brick and stone factories
stood where the old saw mills once
were. "I thought this country was
going to the devill" said to nv
friend, DR.. George r. Butler, at
Alma.
eve thought so, too, but we
were wrong," smiled the doctor rs
he adjusted his diamond pin--"it
Is the sugar beetsr'
The lumber business consists in
cutting down trees. 1t is q pro-
cess of destruction. The trees toe k.
nature a hundred years or more to
produce. And YOU Can never grow
a second crop of pine Oh the same
land-the trees once gone are gone
forever. 1t was man by the namo
OF Bradley at Bay City who con-
oelved the idea of raising suga8A|
beets in Michigan. All this prosX
perlty was once an unspoken
thought in the m,nd ofJlhi one
man. He studied the( chemical
properties Of the soil, and while
making trip through Germany
he found out the sort of soil that
was required to raise sugar beets.
He put the two things together and
fastened home with q valise full of
beet seed.
:. ira l,4.r, L4. -l..a-.a aA,,,,,ot.ono.,
that you could raise from six to
ten tons of sugar bLets on an aero
of that lumber land; and those
beets We're worth five or six dollars
q toll. That was only six years
ago and now there are fourteen
beet sugar factories in Michigan
that each employs q capital of
over six hundred thousand dollars.
The total capital of these facto.
lies is nine million dollars. In
the season OF 1902 there we:o sew
enty-one thousand acres in Michi-
gan devoted to raising bcols. The
amount of cash paid out to the far
mers for beets was over four mill
ion dollars. The amount paid out
for labor in the factories was over
a million and q half dollars. The
machinery used in these factories
is the product Of American labor. |
A beet sugar factory can only thrive
III n small town-in a big town the
farming land that produces the
beets makes too long a laul, Bcets
grow in the ground. Farmers raise
beets. Beets make sugar-thc best
that is. Everybody uses sugar
three times day. This sugar in
dustry IN town means prosperity,
education-planos, books, schools
and good roads Wherever there
is a beet sugar industry, there are
efforts being put forth in the line
of macadamized roads. Good roads
in farming country means civi]i-
zation, and where The roads ar.
poorest there the people are the
most illlterato and ba,baric.
At Alma, Michigan, is a man by
tho name of A. w. Wright, eighty
years young, who has shown the
world what one man can do for the
town in which ho lives. This man
@sss4 caN Of the first to recognize
that sugar heets were good thing
for farmers toTaise. He imported
boot seed from GormanyNand spp>
Piled the farmers, giving ont ltera-
tuae on the subject and enSeurag~
ing thcm in ovory way thor
ough and good worlf Through