Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1903-04-08
Tho SUGAR asot WORKS Transformation.

Twenty years ago was travel
| ing man. ] made the Michigan
towns from Detroit to Bay City and
Saginaw, then across to Grand
Rapids, down to Three Rivers, and
back by way of Kalamazoo, Jackson,
and the present place of the Break
fast Foods, where they make beesom,
balavorax and helta-skelta; then
over to the jayhawker town of Ann
Arbor where there was nothing but
school; on to Ypsilanti, the land
of the Yagerites--union foreverl /
wore a dinky derby, spring bottom
pants, red necktie, waxed mus
tache, and warm vest that would
have made that coat of Joseph seem
like the silence. used to have a
new vest every trip, and it was
always miracle in chromatics. But
this was nothing to my smile--my
smile was contagious-when / ar
rived III a place everybody smiled,
and invited others to smile. The
man who deals out Red Raven Splits
smiled, the 'bus drivers glowed, the
babies cooed, and tho dining-room
girls giggled, when | came to town.
That is what! l scattered smiles,
lilac-tinted stories, good cheer and
silver small change all over the route.
Especially the stories-I always
started out with three new ones, and
/ told 'em from Detroit clear around
to White Pigeon and back. And /
sold the goods. ] did not merely
lay corner-stones and get things in
shape. did not secure promise
of an order the next time. did not
fix the man for future trade and
then brag about it. Not l. / got
his name on the bottom of the order
sheet
That is what l did. Business was
good up around that Saginaw country
1t was the lumber All the rivers
were full of lumber booms. Business
doomed, and doomed business. But
there came day when things began
to relax. Timber was getting scarce,
and there were dire reports of fail
ures. You had to be careful to
whom you sold. Whole towns quit
business and moved away before you
got back. They went where there
was more timber. And as for the
farmers, why, you can't farm to any
advantage in stump country!
Where the trees were cut off the
man who owned the land was un-
fortunate. If you put your hand in
his pocket you would be in debt.
Things were going to the devil
everybody said 80. And / gave the
land of the Michiganders the cold
shake.
That was eighteen years ago.
Recently l went over that same
route again. This time / was dis
tributing the East Aurora eloquence.
I spoke at Lansing, Kalamazoo,
-Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor, Caro-, Saginaw,
Bay City, Owosso and Alma. AT
ecch place the size of the audience
was limited by the capacity of the
house. Talk about your palmy days
Of the New England Lyceum! At
Owosso, for instance, there were
fifteen hundred people in a church
that was designed to seat a thousand.
The people were well-dressed, appre-
ciative, intelligent and prosperous.
In each town / found the streets
paved, new brick blocks were being
built, there were trolley lines, public
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 sawmills once were. "I thought
this country was going to the devil !"
| said to my friend, DR.. George f.
Butler, at Alma.
"We thought 80, too, but we were
wrong" smiled the doctor as he
adjusted his diamond pin-"it is the
sugar beets!"
The lumber business consists in
cutting down trees. 1t is process
of destruction. The trees took
nature hundred years or more to
produce. And you can never grow
second crop of pine on the same
land-the trees once gone are gone
forever. 1t was man by the name
of Bradley at Bay City, who con-
ceived the idea of raising sugar beets
in Michigan. All this prosperity was
once an unspoken thought in the
mind of this 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 to-
gether and fastened home with a
valise full of beet seed.
In year he had demonstrated
that you could raise from six to ten
tons of sugar beets on an acre of that
lumber land; and those beets were
worth five or six dollars a ton. That
was only six years ago and now there
are fourteen beet sugar factories in
Michigan, that each employs capi-
tai of over six hundred thousand
dollars. The total capital of these
factories is nine million dollars. In
the season of 1902 there were sew.
enty. one thousand acres in Michigan
devoted to raising beets. The
amount of cash paid out to The
farmers for beets was over four mil
lion dollars. The amount paid out
for labor in the factories was over a
million and a half dollars. The
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