Arizona republican., 1905-12-02
MORTGAGE LETTERS"
 ALIAS SUGAR BETS
The Observations of a Citizen Who
 Recently Visited Colorado.

The Republican is in receipt of a letter from William Wetzler of Ar hngton, who has just returned from a Vlslt to his former home at Fort Col Hns, Colo. While there MT Wetzler made some observations of the effect of sugar beet factory in a com munity. These observations ought to stimulate interest in the Glendale fac tory MT. Wetzler writes:
 Last summer I made a visit to my old home at Fort Collins, Colo. When l left Fort Collins nine years ago to make my home at Phoenix, Ariz., times there were very dull, money was very scarce, land was cheap and wages for farm labor and most other kinds of labor were very low and there were hundreds of idle men that could not get any work. Most of the farm CTS raised hay and grain, which they had to sell at very low price. Fort Collins was then city of about 5000 inhabitants. It is now city of 12,000. Times are very good and everything is on boom. Alfalfa hay is selling from $7 to $10 a ton; grain is high and scarce, and wages are very high and idle men are very scarce. Land is selling from $100 and $50 to $200 an acre. Now, all these changes were brought about by a sugar beet factory being built there. There are seven fac tories in the state of Colorado, but the one at Fort Collins is the largest; it was built three years ago; it employs about 300 men the year around. Sugar beets in Colorado yield more tonnage to the acre and contain a greater per cent of sugar than any other place in the United States. They yield from ten to twenty tons to the acre. One farmer there raised sixty-five acres that averaged thirty three tons to the acre. The contract price paid by the factory for beets is $5 a ton. The fac tory furnishes the farmers with seed at cost price, and also machinery to work the beets with. They have also imported a great many Russian fami- lies, who they hire out to the farmers to cultivate and tend beets from the time they are planted until they are harvested for $25 an acre. The farm CTS there say it does not pay to raise beets if you can not get yield of ten tons to an acre, as it costs about $40 an acre to raise them, counting seed and a reasonable rent for the ground and harvesting. Most of the work of cultivating a crop of beets is done with horses. There are drills made for beets and also cultivators. The most tedious work is the thinning, which has to be done by hand. Beets in Colorado have to be irrigated the same as here, only not quite as often. Most every farmer is raising beets and all are making money; they call them mortgage filters.
 On account of the farmers blowing up their alfalfa, (which makes the best beet land," hay is scarce and nigh and there it not much grain raised any more, so that a large flour mill and a creamery had to close down and give way to the sugar beet. The railroads have built beet dumps along their tracks every five miles, so that the farmers do not have to haul their beets very far. The dumps are built on very much the same plan as the coal chutes that the railroads use to load their locomotives with coal-the wag- on load of beets dumped into a car by machinery. The irrigation system in that section is the finest in the United States if not in the world. Every where you go there you will see large lakes and reservoirs of water to be used for irrigation when the water in the river gets low. Boost the sugar beet factory.