The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1904-09-09
From The Saginaw Courier Herald.

0uSdT tHuuStrI.
From The Saginaw Courier-Heraid.
Reports from all over the county and
surrounding territory where sugar beets
are raised come with unfailing regulari-
| ty to the effect that the crop is making
magnificent progress. Barring a late
spring, the weather this summer has
been very good for the beets, and at the
present time it could not be better.
The warm sun and the cool nights are
putting the sugar into them rapidly.
No such favorable condition as is now
reported ever was recorded on Sept.
in previous years Factory tests this
week already show 14.6 per cent of
sugar and with continuance of normal
weather for few weeks the coveted 10
mark will be reached The beets are
now beyond danger.
Farmers who planted beets this year
will undoubtedly reap a rich harvest.
1t is great pity that the unexampled
bad weather conditions of the past two
seasons discouraged the farmers from
planting. If every farmer had planted
only two acres each, every factory
would have enough beets to make full
campaign. AS it is, most of them will
run short and only one of the Saginaw
factories will be able to operate.
| Ii the farmers could have been in
duced to plant more freely this year they
would have had bigger bank accounts
this winter, while the factories all run
ming would have resulted in the distri-
button OF big sum Of money into all
channels of trade, mining and manufac-
ture.
Sugar beet raising, as this season will
demostrate, is the greatest money max
ing crop in a normal season that the
farmers of this section could raise, by
long odds. Beets cannot be raised sue
cessfuly by the average farmer as corn,
for instance, in large acreage. No far
mer should plant more acreage to beets
than he can conveniently and economi-
cally care for. Ten acres well attended
to, even in unpropitious years, will
make better returns than a hundred
acres which cannot be cultivated and
cared for as the thrifty and successful
growth and maturing of this tuber de-
mands. In seasons which nearly hun
dred years of farming in Michigan dem
onstrates are the average in this favor
ed peninsula, it is as certain as any
thing can be that the beet will repay
the farmer .bountifully. But he must
learn to raise them in comparatively
small acreage, by intensive farming,
gauging his years planting by his eco
nomical facilities for caring for them.
Machinery will come along soon that
will immensely help him in efforts for
success; Yankee genius has done too
much in the agricultural machinery
line for the planting, cultivating and
harvesting of other crops to be baked
by the sugar beet.
This years success, now practically
assured, will no doubt stimulate in
creased acreage next season. If the
farmers generally will devote some por
tion of their farm to the beets, and do it
along the moderate lines outlined above,
with carefully considered reference to
their ability to care for them as they
would with any well-established crop,
they will, given fairly good weather,
reap substantial reward, directly from
the factory returns and indirectly from
the general diffusion Of wealth. in the
community which will follow full cam
paigns in the factories and activity in
the numerous industries that are, in
more or less degree, collateral to and
dependent upon them.
The success of the beet sugar indus
try, its permanent fixing as steady
source of wealth in this section of the
country year after year, more remuner-
ative to all the people that live here
than any other available industry, de-
pends almost wholly upon the farmers,
and its success means to them a larger
portion of the material returns than to
any other one class that is factor in it..
The industry really is only in its sw ad-
ding clothes, an infant, as might be
said, and it is at critical stage where
many circumstances may combine or
contribute to retard its growth. to stunt
it, to cripple it or paralyze it hopelessly,
but no one of them or all others put to-
gether is SO potential factor in its we'll
being, or the contrary, as the attitude
and action from now on of the farmers
themselves. They can make or mar the
industry-and it is so easy and simple
for them to give it strong impetus to snc-
cess and keep it going that we have
faith that they will not be found lack
ing when they fully appreciate the real
situation.