The San Francisco call., 1904-04-27

crop. Failure in this regard has caused
difficulty in this very State of Mich
| igan to be invaded by the Pittsburg
glass men. Michigan, by the way, has
| twenty-five of the fifty-six factories
in the United States, though its prod
uct is third. California, with but seven
factories, leads the list in the matter of
product, followed by Colorado with her
nine factories. Utah, with seven fac
tories, comes next. New York has two
Washington, Idaho Minnesota, Ohio
and Wisconsin. The product of these
factories the past year totaled 241, 900
tons.
GREAT OPPORTUNITY.
Now. this is the way Mr.. Palmer fig
ures out the opportunity, or one of the
opportunities: The consumption of
sugar in the United States per annum
is 2,500,000 tons. 1.-THE production of
this country, including her islands, is
1,000. 900; importation, 100000. On the
basis of the product of the mills we
have, there could be built and operated
in this country 341 other factories be-
fore the home consumption could be
supplied at home. The army of men
who would be employed in the factories
would be supplemented by the army
of farmers raising the beets-this
among the other benefits-and all are
contingent, as Mr.. Dolliver said in this
same quoted speech, upon leaving the
tariff alone.
And then there are the railroads.&c.
quote Mr.. Palmer again. THE freight
gv14e, OF in 1900
he said, were $96, 900. In that year the
Oxnards built a beet sugar factory
there, and by 1902 the town
had doubled in population and
the railroad freight receipts of
the place footed up s590,0O0. BY this
same ratio your 341 factories that
might and should be built in this coun-
try would add to the business of the
railroads s17O,0OO,0OO in freight. The
beet sugar factory is building three
or four stories high. If we place them
end to end-what we have-there would
be a continuous industry eight miles
in length. If we could add the number
to supply the home demand alone,
there would be a noble line extending
fifty-six miles across country"
These figures of course, are more
picturesque than practical, but they
serve to illustrate an opportunity or
two.
BEGINNING OF INDUSTRY.
But it is the work of the Govern
ment-the Agricultural Department
that l set out to speak of. The max
ing of sugar from beets was begun in
Europe over a century ago. The first
factory was set up in Cuneru, Silesia,
in 1901 At that time the beet con-
tanned from to per cent of sugar.
Since then the content of the mother
beet has been bred up to 16
per cent. The process of breeding
is by a careful course of selec-
ton and fertilization, the beets
containing the highest percentage
being devoted to the growing of seed
year by year. The beet is first selected
from the formation of its leaf, then
the shape of the root and finally as
to the chemical content. Growers and
manufacturers in Germany, which is
now the center of the industry, have
kept record for forty years of their
progress in this way and can show
photographs of lines of mother beets
for twenty generations covering that
time. The oldest factory in the United
States, although there were others
built earlier, is located at Alvarado,
Cal, the property of the Alameda Su-
gar Company. For long time seed
was imported from Germany and to-
day the growers of this country de-
pend largely on the imported seed.
Should this supply be cut off it would
greatly cripple the industry here. This
fact led the Agricultural Department
to interest itself in the matter and
Secretary Wilson dispatched John E.
w. Tracy, seed expert, upon a mission
of inquiry and study, from which he
has just returned with great deal of
valuable information. DR.. H. w. Wy
| lie, chief of the bureau Of chemistry,
and Dr. C. 0. Townsend of the bureau
of seed and plant introduction, have
been analyzing and experimenting
with beets for several years.
The results of this work warranted
Secretary Wilson to say to the Ameri-
can association and to me in an inter-
| view a few days ago that he would be