MN

P16

opy 1
60TH CONGRESS, SENATE. 1 DocuMENT
Ist Session. No. 5380.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Mr. Dicx presented the following

ADDRESSES BY MR. TRUMAN G. PALMER, SECRETARY OF THE

e AMERICAN BEET SUGAR ASSOCIATION, UPON THE PROGRESS

OF THE INDUSTRY, ITS ECONOMIC VALUE TO THE NATION, ITS

SPECIAL IMPORTANCE TO ARID AMERICA, AND THE LEGISLA-
TION WHICH THREATENS ITS DESTRUCTION.

May 29, 1908.—Ordered to be printed.

The thirteenth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial
Congress, one of the most important organizations of the kind in the
United States, was held at St. Paul, August 19-22. |

The congress is non-political and aims to represent and forward
all the material interests of that vast territory which lays west of
the Mississippi River. The beet-sugar interests were ably presented
by Mr. Truman G. Palmer, of Chicago, the well-known beet-sugar
authority, writer, and statistician, who was a delegate of the Los
Angeles Chamber of Commerce and made the trip from Washington
to St. Paul for that purpose.

Below we give Mr. Palmer’s address in full, and we must say that
it touches more important phases of the subject and gives a clearer
and more comprehensive idea of the industry and its importance to
American agriculture than any single paper we have yet seen.

THE AMERICAN: BEZET-SUGAR INDUSTRY.

{Address before the thirteenth annual segsion of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Con-
gress, held at St. Paul, Minn., August 19-22, 1902.]

The development of the manufacture of sugar from beet roots is
one of the marvels of the nineteenth century, and represents an in-
vestment in factories alone, mostly in Europe, of between six and
seven hundred million dollars.

fs. eee ya)

_— r’ J ~

ed P 4 ’ —

r*,
OO a\0
2 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

To consider the beet-sugar industry intelligently, a word should be
said concerning the history of cane sugar, the production of which
supplied the world’s markets for centuries befere it was known that
sugar could be produced, commercially, from beet roots.

CANE SUGAR.

The original habitat of sugar cane is unknown, but is supposed to
be in the country extending from Cochin China to Bengal.

The art of boiling sugar is mentioned as early as the seventh cen-
tury, the art of refining was discovered in the fourteenth century,
Venice became the great European center of the sugar trade in the
fifteenth century, and during that century a Venetian received a re-
ward of 100,000 crowns ($111,940) for the invention of the process
of making loaf sugar.

One of the earliest references to sugar in Great Britain is that of
50 tons being shipped to London in 1319, to be exchanged by a mer-
chant for wool. At that time sugar sold for 43 cents per pound,
and continued to be used only as a luxury and for medicinal purposes
until the eighteenth century.

HISTORY OF BEET SUGAR IN EUROPE.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the barbarians took to
Bohemia a so-called beet root, containing a few saccharine elements,
but not enough to attract attention at that period.

The beet root is not mentioned again until 1705, when Oliver De
Serre discovered that alcohol could be obtained from the fermenta-
tion, which convinced him that sugar existed therein.

In 1747 the Prussian chemist, Marggraf, director of the physical
classes in the Academy of Science at Berlin, obtained sugar from the
common beet root, possessing all the properties known to exist in
cane sugar.

In 1801 Franz Carl Achard, the pupil and successor of Margegraf,
erected at Cunern, Silesia, the first beet-sugar factory in the world.

During the Napoleonic wars, when the British blockade deprived
France of sugar, and the price had risen to $1 per pound, Napoleon
appropriated 1,000,000 francs ($200,000) with which to experiment
with beet roots.

In 1810 the first French factory was erected at Lille, and produced
sugar at a cost of 30 cents per pound, the beets at that time averaging
but 6 per cent of sugar.

Encouraged by Napoleon and by Frederick the Great, the industry
gradually assumed commercial proportions, and from 1822 to 1825
over 100 factories were erected, while by 1830 nearly all the European
countries were taking an active interest in the industry.

By systematic, fostering legislation Europe has secured the invest-
ment of $630,000,000 in an industry. which annually distributes over
$200,000,000 to its farmers and $100,000,000 to other home interests.

Based on the average price which the United States has paid for-
eign countries for refined sugar during the past eleven years (0.0315
cent per pound), the beet sugar producing countries of Europe keep
at home $213,587,000. which they would otherwise send to the Tropics
for the 3,076,000 metric tons of sugar which these countries now
annually consume.

AUG 1 1908
dD, or fi.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 3
~ But for the establishment in Europe of this great industry, which
— now produces two-thirds of the world’s supply of sugar, the present
* price of that commodity would undoubtedly be more than double
-) what it is, and Europe’s importations would be costing her nearly

$500,000,000 a year.

In addition to making this enormous reduction on her importa-
tion of foodstuffs, and the consequent distribution of this money
among European farmers, manufacturers, and miners, the surplus
sugar product which she sells abroad, largely to England and the
United States, annually refills her treasuries to the extent of $150,-
000,000 to $200,000,000 in gold. Were it not for this industry the
great countries of Kurope would be more than bankrupted to-day.

In 1840, thirty-nine years subsequent to the erection of the first
beet-sugar factory, the total world’s production of cane sugar was
1,100,000 tons and of beet sugar 50,000 tons, beet sugar forming 4.35
per cent of the total world’s production.

In 1900 the total world’s production of cane sugar was 2,867,041
tons and of beet sugar 5,607,944 tons, beet sugar forming 66.17 per
cent of the total world’s production, an increase of 11,100 per cent in
sixty years.

The transference of the sugar industry from the Tropics to the
temperate zone is largely due to five causes:

First. Intelligent, fostering legislation for the home beet-sugar
industry by nations within the temperate zone.

Second. Scientific culture of beet roots, which has more than
doubled the sugar content. therein. i

Third. Failure of science to perceptibly increase the sugar content
of cane.

Fourth. Abolition of slave labor in the Tropics.

‘Fifth. The habitat of the sugar beet being in the most highly civ-
ilized portions of the world, has brought to its manufacture the con-
centration of the highest scientific investigation and achievement.

Each of the following fifteen European countries produces all the
sugar that its people consume, and all but four are exporters of sugar:
Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Russia, Belgium, Holland,
Spain, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Roumania, Bulgaria, and
Servia.

The above countries have a combined population of over 330,000,000
people, their total sugar product from 1,511 factories is 5,926,980
tons, of which 3,076,000 tons are consumed at home and 2,850,980
tons are exported.

The non-sugar producing European countries are the free trade
British islands, mountainous Switzerland, and the nonprogressive
States of Portugal, Greece, and Turkey.

As we must pattern after one class or the other, the question natur-
ally arises as to which class it 1s wise for us to follow, from a purely
economical standpoint.

Experts of both Europe and America agree that the sugar beet
area of the United States is many times greater than is that of all
Europe, and that it is but a question of a very short time when we
will be able to produce sugar as cheaply or cheaper than it is being
produced in any beet sugar country in the world.

pet the beet sugar industry means to Europe can be seen at a
glance.

4 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

United States Census Bulletin No. 59 for the year 1899, shows
_ that per each ton of daily beet capacity, the investment in American
beet sugar factories is $1,097,000. In the foliowing estimate the in-
vestment of European factories is figured at $1,000 per ton of daily
capacity. The average acreage yield is placed at 10 tons, the cost
of beets at $4 per ton, the “ factory expense ” at $2 per ton, and the
extraction of sugar at 12 per cent.

INUMpDer sO f(a CLORIOS = > ee re ae ee Be ee eee te A 1, 5a
Capital iny CS tease ea eee een re ee ee ee ee eS $625, 000, 000
Tonsof sheets worked va nmuall liye ee eee Pee ek EE 51, 598, 400
ACTES (cultivated stot becis ses ier RBeEE ieee Et Lied tr. 5, 159, 840
Paidsto: farmers tor pects]. eee eee ee ee Ree ees $206, 393, 600
Paid for labor, fuel, lime rock, coke, limestone, mill supplies, etc__ $103, 198, 800
TPotalanntalevexpendicures =. esa seen Sen Oe ee ee $309, 592, 400

BEET SUGAR IN AMERICA—FAILURES.

The first attempt to produce beet sugar in America was made in
Philadelphia in 1830, and proved to be an utter failure. Subsequent
attempts were made at various times from 1837 to 1878 at Northamp-
ton, Mass., Chatsworth Park, IIl., Freeport, Ill., Fond du Lac, Wis., in
New Jersey, California, and Portland, Me., it being estimated that
over $2,250,000 were sunk in these experiments.

FIRST SUCCESSFUL PLANTS

In 1879 the first successful American factory was erected at Alva-
rado, Cal. In 1888 we had two factories, and for the first time in
our history produced 1,000 tons of beet sugar in a single season.
When the Dingley bill was passed five years ago, we had six factories,
which it had cost $2,000,000 to construct.

EXPANSION UNDER THE DINGLEY TARIFF.

Since the passage of the Dingley bill we have erected 36 factories
and enlarged the other plants at a cost of over $30,000,000.

In addition to this, the Department of Agriculture in January of
this year gave out a list of 86 factories which were projected and
would require an expenditure of $49,000,000 in construction work
alone.

The production of beet sugar in the United States in 1900 was
76,659 tons; in 1901, 185,000 tons; an increase of 140 per cent in a
single year, and the plantings this year are reported to be 85 per
cent greater than in 1901.

FUTURE EXPANSION.

The United States importations of sugar last year ‘mn excess of
what we produced at home and received from our island possessions,
were over 1,500,000 tons. To produce this sugar at home would mean
the construction of 500 new factories, at an expense of $275,000,000,
and the cultivation of over 1,600,000 acres to beets, for which our
farmers would receive about $70,000,000 annually. As the sugar
consumption in the United States is increasing at the rate of over 6
per cent per annum, sixteen years hence we should provide for the

roduction of another 2,500,000 tons annually, which would return
$100,000,000 more to our farmers, or a total of $170,000,000 each year.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 5
EARLY MISCONCEPTIONS.

We have had, and still have, many things to learn concerning the
industry. I remember very well that when I commenced to investi-
gate this subject the prevailing opinion was that California was the
only State in the Union in which beets could be grown successfully.
To-day we have a chain of 45 factories, stretching from ocean to
ocean.

It was but six or eight years ago that the officers of the Chino, Cal.,
factory, learning that some of the farmers were irrigating their
beets, sent out notice that no irrigated beets would be received, no
beets ever having been raised by irrigation, and the supposition being
that they would be of low sugar content. To-day our richest beets
are grown by irrigation.

TEN YEARS’ PROGRESS AT LEHI.

In 1891 the acreage tonnage at Lehi, Utah, was 6.6 tons per acre;
in 1901, 11.50 tons per acre, an increase of 74 per cent in ten years.
In 1891, the sugar content of the Lehi beets was 11 per cent; in 1901,
15.20 per cent, an increase of 38 per cent. In 1891 the sugar extrac-
tion at Lehi was 110 pounds per ton of beets; in 1901 it was 235
pounds, an increase of 114 per cent. In 1889 the “ factory expense ”
in working up a ton of beets at the Alvarado, Cal., factory, was $6.57 ;
in 1897, $2.71, a decrease of 58 per cent.

It will thus be seen that we are making rapid strides in the right
direction, and it is only a question of time when the American farmer
and the American artisan will be able to compete with the world.

LABOR-SAVING APPLIANCES.

Europe has cheap labor and dear horses, and hence has not the
American incentive to decrease the labor of the former and increase
that of the latter. With us the reverse condition is true, and hence
more and more of our field work is being done by horses. In all
parts of the beet belt various experiments are being made, the suc-
cess of which will still further reduce the hand labor. In Kansas
they are trying a new method to avoid much of the hand work of
weeding and thinning; in Michigan they are experimenting with
ridge planting to accomplish the same purpose, and various experi-
ments are being made whereby the beets are lifted, topped, and
loaded into wagons entirely by machinery. Ten years from now but
little hand work will be necessary, and therein lies one of the most
important points in the development of the industry.

WASTE OF BY-PRODUCTS.

In France the returns from the sale of pulp alone amount to over
_ 4 per cent on the entire capital invested in beet-sugar factories. In
the United States, with few exceptions, the disposal of the pulp is a
ositive expense, yet for bone, blood, and milk, beet pulp is worth
3.40 per ton, as against hay at $10 and corn meal at $18 per ton. Our
farmers will learn this in time, and this utilization of a single by-
product will yield a fair interest on the entire investment. In -

6 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Europe alcohol, potash, vinegar, shoe blacking, and other products
are obtained from the waste of the beet, and it can be but a question
of time when the American will utilize every particle of the beet,
just as the late Phil. Armour said the packers now utilize every par-
ticle of the pig except the squeal.

FULL-ACREAGE TONNAGE.

The full tonnage of beets, planted 8 inches apart, in rows 18 inches
wide, is 38 tons per acre, and the honorable Secretary of Agriculture
informs me that time and again he has raised 28 tons per acre on his
Iowa farm. Yet the average tonnage last year in the United States
was 9.6 tons. Al this will be rapidly rectified as our farmers become
familar with the culture.

In the vicinity of Magdeburg, Germany, beets are grown on land
worth $800 to $1,200 per acre, land where the rent is high, and where
fertilizers to the value of $12 to $15 per acre must be added each year,
and still the beets are sold at a profit of $4 to $4.50 per ton. So
anxious are the farmers to raise this most profitable crop that the
factories are obliged to limit the beet acreage of each farmer.

BEETS AND DROUGHT.

The sugar beet will stand more drought, on the one hand, or more
excessively wet weather, on the other, than will almost any crop that
the farmer can raise; hence it is a safe crop, which is sold in advance
at a fixed cash price.

BEETS IN ROTATION.

As a rotater the sugar beet is far above any other ordinary crop.
The opinion formerly ‘prevailed that the sugar beet rapidly exhausted
the soil, but this is not the case, if properly rotated.

Let me read to you a report from one of our German consuls:

A German farm of 625 acres produced, before the introduction of beet culture,
yearly, 9,736 bushels of grain in ten years’ average. After beet culture was in-
troduced, with 125 acres yearly to beets, the average yearly grain crop from the
remaining 500 acres was 9,870 bushels, or 134 bushels’ increase. Another farm
in the province of Saxony, also of 625 acres, produced before beet culture was
introduced, in ten years’ average, 13,879 bushels of grain. When five years
afterwards 135 acres were planted with beets, the grain crop of the are
490 acres was 14,365 bushels’ average, and afterwards, when yearly 220 acres of
beets were planted, the average grain crop from the remaining 405 acres was|
14,397 bushels, or 518 bushels more than from the whole 625 acres before beets
were raised. Thirty-five other farms of 500 to 1,000 acres each in the province
of Saxony showed the following result:

Average crops per acre, in pounds.

Before After | Increase,

beet cul- | beet cul- in Per cent

ture. ture. | pounds, | imerease.
1,848 2,292 444 24
456 1,672 216 14
1,672 2,094 422 25
1,355 1,918 563 41
985 1,834 849 86
6,716 | 13,500| 6,874| 102.

The average beet crop of these farms was 17 tons 400 pounds per acre.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 7

The above demonstrations show what a boon the culture of beets
will be to our farmers, who are the backbone of our national wealth.
The Secretary of Agriculture states that in order to get the benefit of
beets as a rotater and to get the pulp to feed to his cows the farmer
could actually afford to furnish the factory the sugar from his beets
free, and then would be only selling the air, for the sugar in beets
comes wholly from the air.

Professor Powell, formerly of the Smithsonian Institution, makes
the statement that in semiarid America there is enough rich tillable
land and enough water that the two, once married, would support in
affluence 70,000,000 people.

IT am familiar with nearly all of our arid country, and I can form
no other conclusion than that from an agricultural standpoint our
most productive land has been left to the last, an inheritance for fu-
ture generations.

BEETS AND IRRIGATION.

Congress, for the first time, has now acted in the matter of national
irrigation, and we hope that soon large areas of our desert country
will be placed under irrigation ditches. Now, ask any agricultural
expert as to what is the best crop that can be grown in large quantities
on this arid land. He will tell you “ sugar beets,” because the farmer
has a market that can not be overdone. It is by all odds the greatest
agricultural possibility in America, both East and West, but more
especially the West, where the variety of crops is more limited, and
the industry deserves the continued fostering care of our Federal
Government.

AGRICULTURAL EXPORTS AND IMPORTS.

The United States exports about $800,000,000 worth of agricultural
products annually and imports $400,000,000 worth annually. Of
this $400,000,000 in gold which we send abroad for agricultural
_ products, $100,000,000 to $125,000,000 are for sugar, every pound of
which we are eminently adapted to produce. Of the remaining
$300,000,000 worth, coffee, rubber, spices, and fibers constitute about
$200,000,000, all of which our newly acquired island possessions are
adapted to produce, and they and adjoining islands should eventually
supply them.

Increased acreage tonnage by cultivation and proper rotation,
utilization of the waste, and reduction of the hand labor are evolutions
of the near future in the production of American beet sugar which
will revolutionize its cost of production, give employment to hun-
dreds of thousands of farmers and artisans, and cheaper sugar to
the nation. :

REFINING VERSUS MANUFACTURING SUGAR.

The refining of imported raw sugar yields but little to American
industry and should be abandoned as soon as possible. According
to the figures furnished the United States Industrial Commission by
the sugar refiners, American industry secures but $6.72 out of the
refining of 1 ton of imported raw sugar. In producing a ton of
sugar from American-grown beets American industry receives a
trifle over $80, based on the present average cost of about 4 cents per

8 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

pound to produce. Some American factories are now producing beet
sugar at less than 3 cents per pound; and when the cost of production

ets down to 2 cents per pound, American industry will still receive
540 per ton by manufacturing our own sugar, as against $6.72 per
ton by refining the imported article.

The proposition of refining as compared to manufacturing sugar
could well be compared to iron, steel, copper, wheat, and corn.
Suppose it were proposed that we shut down our iron mines and im-
port our iron in the shape of pigs or ore, simply using American
labor to work it over into shapes, or import our wheat and corn and
grind it here. The cases would be parallel and in favor of manu-
facturing our sugar and importing our corn and wheat, for the

farmer makes a greater profit in raising beets than in raising either |

of the other crops.

Another thing about the beet sugar industry is, that it is impossi-
ble to make a trust out of it without taking the farmers into the
deal, and the factories must be scattered; whereas, the refineries are
all located on the coast, and virtually all in a trust, which arbitra-
rily fixes the price which 76,000,000 of Americans shall pay for an
article of daily consumption.

The material results of fostering the beet sugar industry will be
the retention at home of from $100,000,000 to $125,000,000 which we
now annually send abroad, cheaper sugar, better farming, more grain
per acre, less competition, a boon to the dairy and stock interests,
besides many minor advantages.

LOCAL BENEFITS.

Sos more thought on the practical lines of this subject and I will
close.

Desirous of obtaining accurate information concerning the aver-
age beneficial results brought about locally by the establishment of
beet sugar factories throughout the United States, I recently wrote
to the local bankers, county assessors, and postmasters where each of
our sugar factories is located, and to the sugar companies as well,
inclosing a blank on which were some 31 questions, to which I re-
quested answers. Not all of the blanks have been returned, but I
will give you the benefit of those already received. I will state at
the outset that not a word of discouragement was expressed in any
answer in any report. :

I asked: “‘ What gross proceeds per acre are your farmers able to
secure in beet culture?” In most instances they gave me the range
from the lowest to the highest. The lowest was $25, the highest
$180, the average of all $69.40 per acre.

The next question was: “And how does this compare with what
they obtain in raising other crops?” Among the replies were: “ One
hundred per cent higher.” ‘“ Beets best crop we can grow.” “ Favor-
able.” ‘‘ Very much in excess of other crops.” “About 300 per cent.”
“An increase of 80 per cent.” “A decided improvement.” “About
three times as much.”

Then I asked: “As the farmers become familiar with beet raising,
are they more or are they less anxious to raise beets?” All replied
that they were more anxious; that interest was increasing, and, in
all but one case, that the acreage was being extended.

-

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 9

I next asked: “ Have farm mortgages increased or decreased since
the erection of the factory, and to what extent?” All but two stated
that they had decreased, some materially, some 25 per cent, some 30
per cent, one that very few farms were now mortgaged. ‘Two stated
that farm mortgages had increased owing to the fact that renters
were becoming able to buy on partial payments.

I then asked for: “ The average price for agricultural lands prior
to the location of the factory and at the present time?” Two gave no
price before the factory was erected, the land being a desert and of
little value; land in one of those sections now being worth $100 per
acre, in the other $150 per acre. Of the others, the smallest increase
was 20 per cent, the greatest 250 per cent. The average price of all
wwas $34.28 per acre prior to the location of the factory, and $75.55
per acre at the present time. The average increase in value was 124
per cent.

The next question was: “ What effect has the erection of the fac-
tory had on the prosperity of the farmers?” Here are some of the
replies: “ Glorious.” ‘“ Profits double.” “They are paying debts
and renters are buying farms.” ‘“ Good.” ‘“ Much interest shown.”
“ Diversity of crops.” ‘“ Enables them to buy land and build homes.”
“ Better prices and demand for produce of all kinds.” ‘“ Greatly in-
creased.”

I think this pretty accurately sizes up the situation as to the far-
reaching beneficial effect of the erection of a beet sugar factory on
surrounding farmers.

But this is only part of it. Merchants and real estate men are
affected; in fact, the whole community. I called for the assessed
valuation of all town property before the erection of the factories
and at the present time, the same information as to population,
average price of residence lots, and of business lots. The replies
show the average increase to be as follows:

Per cent.
PSN CSSetieE val UelGlOn- IN Cr CaNGe anne ee Jo ee il;
EAT LOM va CREA meas We reis as Se aad edt oe ee we SE See 894
Average value of residence lots, increase____________-____-___-_--__-_---_ 59
Ameraconv allie OF DUSINESS: 1OtS, Increase 2 = — =e 188

Rocky Ford, Colo., is a fair sample of what a beet sugar factory
does for even a good town. Two years ago Rocky Ford was a pros-
_ perous town of 1,500 people, largely engaged in raising the celebrated

“ Rocky Ford melons” for the Eastern market. The American Beet
Sugar Company erected a factory there for the 1900 campaign.
Rocky Ford’s population during these two years has jumped from
1,500 to 3,000, her assessed valuation from $327,608 to $645,344, the
price of average residence lots from $50 to $200, of average business
lots from $750 to $2,000. Over 400 buildings have been constructed
at an expense exceeding $400,000, and 40 more were in course of con-
struction at the time my blanks were filed out.

Sugar City, Colo., is an illustration of what a sugar factory will
do for a barren desert. When the National Sugar Manufacturing
Company stuck the stakes for the Sugar City factory there was not
a house, a barn, or even a shack in sight in any direction; when steam

was turned on in the factory seven months later, a crop of 15,000
tons of beets was ready to harvest and the town had 1,800 people,
which population has since increased to 2,500.

/

10 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

All these results are directly and wholly attributable to the erection
of the beet sugar factories. I put another question: “ What effect
has the erection of the factory had on the prosperity of your mer-
chants?” Here are some of the replies: “Greatly increased.”
“Business doubled.” “ Profits doubled.” “Many new_ stores.”
“Prosperous.” “No failures.” ‘ Increased cash sales.” ‘“ Increased
the business a thousand per cent.” ‘ Neither merchants nor pros-
perity before.”

The question is, Do we want 600 more such towns, each surrounded
by a thousand or more prosperous farmers’ families, or will we by
changing existing tariff conditions run the risk of selling the birth-
right of the American farmer for a mess of pottage ?

WEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES AND ITS RELATION TO THE AMERICAN
BEET-SUGAR INDUSTRY.

[Address before the fourteenth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Con-
gress, held at Seattle, Wash., August 18—22, 1903.]

My reasons for addressing you on the subject of the Philippines
are threefold: First, that the policy of our Government in dealing
with the Philippine Islands is still in a formative stage; second, that
the future development of the material resources of the trans-Missis-
sippi territory will be greatly affected by the final policy which this
Government shall adopt in handling the Philippine problem, and
third, because under the development and control of these tropical
islands by a temperate zone country it is possible to work out success-
fully one of the greatest mutual and national economic problems pos-
sible, namely, to produce under the Stars and Stripes all we consume.

As our legislators, irrespective of party affiliation, are still in
doubt as to what further legislation concerning the Philippines will
prove to be wise, and inasmuch as the strongest kind of pressure by
interested parties is exerted to bring about certain additional Philip-
pine legislation at the forthcoming session of Congress, it seems
opportune that the material interests of these islands and their rela-
tion to the trans-Mississippi territory should be considered by this
Congress at the present time.

Throughout and all about this grand trans-Mississippi country
the influence of this congress has been felt for twelve years. On the
Mississippi River; at New Orleans, Beaumont, Galveston, the Brazos
and Aransas Pass on the Gulf; at San Diego, San Pedro, San Fran-
cisco, and Puget Sound on the west: and in the interior through
various provisions in our river and harbor bills; and last, but greatest
of all, by our national irrigation law, has the influence of this body
for the upbuilding of its people been exerted, felt, and appreciated.

For years you have worked and waited patiently for the enactment
of a national irrigation law, but while you waited there was no danger
of legislation which would forestall it once the people were ready for
it. The case with the Philippines is different. There is bound to be
Philippine legislation soon, and this congress should use its influence,
first, to safeguard the interests of the people it represents, and second,
to forward the interests of the 8,000,000 to 9,000,000 of little brown
men who have recently come under our flag.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. te
LOCATION OF THE PHILIPPINES.

Far away from our shores, near the southeastern coast of Asia, to
the northeast of the Island of Borneo, and just above the equator, le
the Philippine Islands. Geographically they are 7,000 miles from
the United States proper. From the north end of the Island of
Luzon to the south end of the Island of Mindanao it is 780 miles,
while the extreme width of the archipelago is about 650 miles.

The total area of the islands is 73,345,415 acres, a territory as large
as New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined, a little
less than that of either Colorado or Utah and slightly less than that
of Japan, which supports a population of about 30,000,000 people.

Of the 73,000,000 acres, 40,000,000 acres are in virgin timber, much
of the balance has grown up in second-growth timber; 65,000,000
acres are arable when cleared. The land is most fertile and for the
greater part naturally irrigated.

With the exception of a little less than 5,000,000 acres all the
land in the Philippines is in the public domain, belonging to the
government to dispose of as it pleases. Herein lies an opportunity
which is being worked for speculation and which may easily bring
disaster to the Filipino people and to arid America. Already in-
habited by one person to every 8 acres (though largely in little set-
tlements), the public domain when divided up will afford 40 acres to
each family of five.

These lands, honestly managed, should go to the future Filipinos.
They should be held by the government until parceled out in home-
steads or small holdings, each the basis of the hearthstone around
which centers the patriotism and highest civilization of which we
under Old Glory boast. Let the pace be set now that will avoid a
system of tenantry that means serfdom. Establish the right to pro-
prietorship of the most binding and sacred influence to civilization
and government, and that is a home.

The pending schemes to parcel these lands out in 25,000-acre prin-
cipalities to American exploiting corporations would eventually rob
the natives of the right to become land owners in their own country
and force them to become the servile tenants of corporate landlords.

Fortunately for the Filipino people and for us as their guardians,
with the sole exception of sugar all of their agricultural industries
can be developed to best advantage in small holdings of a few acres,
and the chief capital required is labor.

The Philippines are populated with between 8,000,000 and 9,000,-
000 native people, who are a cross between the Malays and Japanese.
of whom 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 are so-called civilized Christians, the
balance being savages and Moros. As to foreign population, in .
1876 there were 30,797 Chinamen, who were scattered throughout
the islands, and 378 white foreigners, most of whom lived in Manila,
the metropolis.

In 1902 there were living in the city of Manila 7,852 foreigners,
9,722 Americans, 60,680 Chinamen, and 223,000 natives, a total of
302,154. The population of the Philippine Islands averages 74.45 to
me eauare mile. We have but 10 States which are so densely popu-
ated.

The average density of population of the United States, not in-
cluding Alaska, is but 25.6 per square mile, or about one-third of

12 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

what it is in the Philippines. The trans-Mississippi territory boasts
but 9 States where the population reaches 10 per square mile.
California has 9.5, Washington 7.7, Colorado and South Dakota 5.2,
North Dakota 4.5, Oregon 4.4, Utah 3.4, Idaho 1.9, Montana 1.7, New
Mexico 1.6, Arizona 1.1, Wyoming .9, Nevada .4, so you can judge by
comparison as to how thickly populated these islands are with their
74.5 inhabitants per square mile.

Unlike the opening up of our Western States, the opening up of
the Philippines will not make homes for the overcrowded States of
the East, not only because of the density of the Philippine popula-
tion, but on account of the climate, which does not afford a sanitari-
um for our people, to say the least.

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION.

If Paris is France, then surely Manila is the Philippines, for it is
the only city of any pretensions in the archipelago. It is not like this
Pacific coast country, where we have Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San
. Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and a multitude of smaller cities.
Manila is the metropolis; it has no rivals, and there are few other set-
tlements we would dignify by the name of village. The people are
scattered about, neither in cities nor on the land generally, but in little
settlements, and their principal food is rice, fish, and wild fruit and
vegetables.

Ninety per cent of the people do not speak even Spanish, and their
only education, if they have any, is limited to a knowledge of their
local dialect and to a knowledge of reading or writing to the extent
of being able to sign their names and spell out the catechism.

Until American occupation 600 schools sufficed for the entire 8,000,-
000 to 9,000,000 population. Since American occupation over 7,500
schools have been established, in which are about 1,000 American
teachers.

Their beasts of burden are the water buffalo, slow going animals,
which must be allowed to enter the water frequently or they will die.
The bulk of the water buffalo were recently swept away by the rinder-
pest, which ravages the islands every few years, but as these animals
are common in Southern China and India, the Philippines are re-
stocked from those countries.

They also have a limited supply of native ponies, and these were re-
cently decimated by the surra, as were also the American horses which
had been shipped in.

They have no hoes, rakes, forks, shovels, picks, or any agricultural
tools or implements except an occasional wood pointed plow.

Our Louisiana and Tennessee friends would look on in wonderment
to see them plant and harvest rice and sugar. The rice is sown in a
“ seeding plot,” and at the end of six weeks, when it is about.a foot
in height, the stalks are transplanted one by one by hand, to a flooded
field. The planter uses a stock to make the hole in the soft ground
and thrusts the root of the rice stalk in, one at a time, until he has
40,000 planted on an acre.

In harvesting he cuts the stalks one by one, ties them up in bundles,
and thrashes it by crushing between blocks of hard wood or by al-
lowing the water buffalo to tramp over it, regardless of the cracking
of the kernels.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 13

In planting sugar cane several natives guide a wood-pointed plow
which is pulled by a water buffalo, or, as is more often the case, na-
tives by the dozen on their hands and knees turn and prepare the soil
with their hands, or with little bamboo sticks, the methods of planting
and harvesting being equally crude.

Prior to American occupation the wage rate of Chinese laborers
on sugar estates was 8 cents per day, of natives 10 cents per day, the
laborers boarding themselves. Employers who operated stores were
able to get their help as low as $15 a year, figuring at cost the goods
which they supplied them. Since American occupation the wage rate
has increased quite materially.

As in all tropical countries, the wants of the natives are simple, and
indolence is their besetting sin. But that they will work and work
well is the general testimony of the quartermasters and other Amer-
ican officers, who say that for both skilled and unskilled labor they
prefer them to Chinamen.

The wealth of the Philippines lies in her forests and her agricul-
ture. No mines of any account have been discovered, and aside from
the making of cigars little has been done in manufacturing.

FORESTRY.

In her 40,000,000 acres of virgin forests the chief of the Philip-
pine forestry bureau already reports the discovery of between 600
and 700 species of timber, including twelve species of cabinet woods,
many of them unknown to any other portion of the globe, dye woods
gum trees, gutta-percha and rubber, and pine timber, the sight of
which the American governor of Abra says, “ would make the lum-
bermen of Maine stand in open-mouthed wonderment.” All but
about 1,000,000 acres, or one-fortieth of these forests, belong to the
government.

The forestry bureau estimates that at the present government tax
of 6 cents per cubic foot, and cutting only trees which are over
20 inches in diameter, the timber removed from 20,000,000 acres will
yield the government $100 per acre, or $2,000,000,000, and still leave
the forests in better condition than at present.

The other 20,000,000 acres he estimates will yield more than half
as much more. He further reports that after the mature and over-
mature timber is removed the revenue from the sale of the annual
increase of growth of public timber will, under careful supervision,
bring the state a reasonable interest on a valuation of $200 per acre,
which would amount to $240,000,000 annually on a basis of 3 per cent.

For the year 1902 we imported cabinet woods to the value of
$3,400,957, and the Philippines exported it to the value of $72,480.
These woods enter our market free of duty, and with such an
abundance of hard-wood forests our free market should greatly
stimulate the development of this industry, which alone would make
the Filipinos the richest people on the face of the earth.

GUTTA-PERCHA AND INDIA RUBBER.
In 1902 we imported gutta-percha and india rubber to the value

of $27,094,622, while the Philippines exported it to the value of
$182,312.

14 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Many millions of American money have been invested in estab-
lishing rubber plantations in Mexico, Central and South America.
In the Philippines there are vast native forests of both gutta-percha
and rubber trees. The wasteful method of gathering the sap by ring-
ing the trees prevails, and yields but one-thirty-fifth to one-fortieth
of the entire yield which can be secured by up-to-date methods, and
still it is profitable.

The great island of Mindanao, the largest in the archipelago, over
which Gen. Leonard Wood has recently been made governor, is the
most celebrated of all for its forests of gum, gutta-percha, and rub-
ber trees. It is inhabited by wild men and Moros, who are rapidly
being subjugated, and stupendous financial results can be looked for
from rubber and gutta-percha in that quarter.

As to planting and establishing rubber plantations, the Philippine
Commission states that that is a project which can in no sense be
considered in the ight of an experiment, and that planters estimate
an annual return of from $150 to $200 per acre after the trees reach
maturity, the first good harvest being in six years from the planting.

It can confidently be expected that vast sums of American money
will find its way into the gathering of Philippine rubber and gutta-
percha from the original forests and in establishing plantations
which should eventually supply us with the $27,000,000 worth which
we annually consume. We formerly imposed a duty of 50 per cent
ad valorem on rubber, but abolished it in 1870, and rubber and gutta-
percha now enter our markets free of duty.

HEMP.

I venture the assertion that no other country in the world possesses
such a valuable copyright on its leading product as nature has given
to the Philippines in the matter of hemp. Manila hemp can be pro-
duced in no other portion of the world, but grows wild in both moun-
tains and valleys in the Philippines. It affords the greatest return
for the effort expended of any product of the island. Natives make
$4 to $5 a day in gathering the wild product, while the profits are
doubled when the plant is put under cultivation.

The cost of original planting is as low as $1.25 per 1,000 plants,
from 200 to 700 to the acre. The bureau of insular affairs states that
one-twentieth of the eastern and southern portions of the islands are
utilized for hemp growing, and that five-eighths of the remainder,
now covered with forests, are suitable for the cultivation of hemp.
Manila hemp can be produced at a profit of one-third the present
prices, or at one-half the cost of the cheaper substitutes, such as sisal
grass, of which the world consumes over $100,000,000 worth annually,
because it can not get Manila hemp.

The plant resembles the banana, is immune from insect pests or
damage by weather conditions, and requires no machinery in either
growing or harvesting, and hence no capital is necessary to engage in
the business. There is no necessity of replanting for a long time, as
new shoots are continually forming, and when one is cut off another is
almost ready to harvest.

From 44,137 tons in 1877, the exportations have risen to 65,476 tons
in 1900 and 108,264 tons in 1902. The exportations for 1902 were
valued at $16,019,438, and formed 65 per cent of the total exports of

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 15

the islands and 75 per cent of the agricultural exports. Practically
all Manila hemp is used for ship rigging, which demands the best
article in the market, but even the cheaper sisal grass substitute com-
mands $133.53 per ton against $186.97 per ton for Manila hemp;
hence there is a hundred-million-dollar world market for this profit-
able copyright Philippine specialty. There is no American customs
duty on hemp, and we now take about one-half of the Philippine
product.

COFFEE.

The American importations of coffee, largely from Brazil, are enor-
mous. In 1900 the value of our importations was $54,468,041, while
in 1902 it had risen to $70,919,257, all of which comes in free of duty.
Until a short time ago coffee was a widely distributed product in
several provinces of the Philippines, frequently standing third in the
value of her exports. The magnificent palaces of the former so-called
Philippine coffee barons are still standing in Lipa, and the exquisite
work on the interior timbers, which were hand carved after being
placed in position, is greatly admired by American visitors. Experts
declare that many localities produce a berry equal to the Mocha, the
highest-priced coffee in the world.

The superiority of the Philippine coffee is shown by the fact that
while they secured 124 cents per pound for their product in 1902, the
1,000,000,000 pounds which we imported the same year only brought
the growers, laid in our ports, an average of 64 cents per pound, or
about one-half as much. Some years ago the borers, common to all
- horticultural countries, and easily coped with by modern horticultural
science, attacked the Philippine coffee plantations and practically
ruined them. The exports in 1902 amounted to but 189,046 pounds,
valued at $23,102, or 124 cents per pound.

The Department of Agriculture some time ago established a very
efficient station at Manila, with substations in various portions of the
islands, where our skilled horticulturists and agriculturists are edu-
cating the natives in the science of production, the fighting of pests,
and the use of modern agricultural implements.

Never again will the borers be allowed to ravage the Philippine
coffee plantations, and with a duty-free market and a coffee which
commands double the price per pound this rich nation pays for the
$70,000,000 worth we are now importing from other countries, it
surely should not be long before coffee will again be one of the largest
items of Philippine export.

COPRA AND COCOANUTS.

We annually import a little more than $1,000,000 worth of cocoa-
nuts and dried cocoanut meat called copra, which is largely used
in the manufacture of soap. In 1902 the Philippines exported
$1,000,000 worth of this product, while for the first nine months of the
fiscal year 1903 the exports were valued at $3,231,421, three-quarters
of which went to France. The monthly summary of commerce of the
.Philippines says that copra is a good, steady crop in any of the
southern islands, and that a small cluster of cocoanut trees is suffi-
cient to keep a native family in the lap of luxury.

16 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The tree has to be planted and guarded against the browsing of
cattle for the first four or five years of its life. After that, nature and
the Chinese trader will do the rest. The ground under the trees is
now either allowed to grow up with brush or is kept clear by hand.
The life of a tree is in the neighborhood of a century.

Two hundred trees can be grown to the acre, almost assuring an
annual income of $100 gold. ‘Thus it can be seen that the position of
a proprietor of a large and flourishing grove of cocoanut trees is al-
most a sinecure. The wear and tear on the human system of sitting
in the shade and watching the copra crop mature is so small as to be
almost inconsiderable. Cocoanut lands can be had in Mindanao at
$5 to $10 per acre, and the product enters our market free of duty.

CACAO.

The United States imports of crude and prepared cacao for 1902
were valued at $6,950,336. The Philippine exports in 1900 were
valued at $2,203, and have been gradually diminishing since that time,
The secretary of the interior to the Philippine Commission reports
that the cacao produced in the islands is of a very superior quality,
most of the exports going to Spain, where it brings an especially
high price.

Insect pests and lack of proper care are accountable for the present
condition of the plantations, and will be remedied through the efforts
of our Department of Agriculture. The Bureau of Insular Affairs
recently issued a bulletin devoted solely to cacao, showing that it
is one of the most profitable crops which can be grown in the islands,
and it should not be long before they supply us with the $7,000,000
worth which we annually import, all of which comes in free of duty.

SISAL.

Of sisal grass and other fibers, not including hemp, the Philippines
exported last year $178,120 worth; of copal, which makes the finest
varnish in the world, $73,010; of other gums, $68,792; of tortoise
shells, $101,444; of indigo, $8,806, making the total value in exports,
including the articles already mentioned, $17,548,447.

HOW TO AID BOTH PHILIPPINES AND THE UNITED STATES.

With one or two minor exceptions all of the above-mentioned
articles are produced from the forests or from small individual
plantations, which can be established practically without any capital,
and the opportunity for expansion in each of these industries is all
but limitless.

While the Philippines exported about $17,500,000 worth of these
products, the United States imported them last year, from the Phil-
ippines and from other countries, to the enormous value of $144,-
873,556. Not a pound of them are now produced or ever will be
produced in the United States proper, as they are of a purely tropical
nature and can not be grown here. The fostering of these most
profitable industries in the Philippines and in our other island pos-
sessions will be a great boon to our newly acquired “little brown

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 17

men,” will make us more independent of other nations, and will not
injure a single industry, a locality, or a person in the United States.

We now have a coffee country of our own, a rubber country, a gutta-
percha country, a copra country, a cacao country, a hemp country
(the only one in the world), a rare cabinet-wood country, and we
should do everything possible to encourage those 8,000,000 brown men
to produce the $150,000,000 of these articles which we annually con-
sume. If the encouragement already given by the Department of
Agriculture and by other departments of our Government should not
prove to be sufficient, we could put a tariff of a quarter of a cent a
pound on coffee coming from other countries, and that would raise
$2,500,000 a year, which could be covered into a special fund to be
used by the Philippine government to develop a coffee country of our
own, and no one would feel such a slight tax. The same would follow
as to the other Philippine products mentioned, and we would soon
have the ocean alive with ships bringing from our own possessions
those tropical products which we can not produce at home.

If the Philippine lands are eventually divided up amongst the
Filipino people, each head of a family will possess a little less than
40 acres of arable land, the fruits of which will enable them to rear
and educate their families and become a evilized people, composed
of self-respecting, independent, landowners.

If, on the other hand, their lands are given away to great corpora-
tions, the Filipino people must eventually become homeless chattels
of those corporate interests.

COMPETITIVE PRODUCTS.

Now that I have recounted the important Philippine industries
which can profitably be extended indefinitely without injuring the
conditions of a single American citizen, let me turn to those Philip-
pine industries where Asiatic labor at 8 cents per day comes in com-
petition with our labor—to-day, and I hope for all time, the best paid
in the world. Of these products there are at present but two, sugar
and tobacco, both of which are produced very cheaply and in great
quantities in the Philippines, and both of which are important Ameri-
can agricultural industries, one of them being a trans-Mississippi
specialty of no shght importance.

TOBACCO.

The 1902 exports of Philippine tobacco and cigars, mostly cigars,
amounted in value to $2,761,432, and the exports are gradually grow-
ing. The product is largely taken by Europe and Asia, little of it
now coming to the United States. Labor is so cheap in the Philip-
pines that a fair cigar can be had in Manila at a cost of 1 cent.

Our Bureau of Labor has prepared a list of all wageworkers in
Manila, giving the number engaged in each occupation and the wages
which are paid. This publication shows that the 31 cigar and ciga-
rette factories of Manila employ 12,168 people, of whom 18 are white,
468 are Chinamen, and 11,700 are natives. The average wage rate
of them all, in gold, is 853 cents per day, or, but a fraction over 25
per cent of what the Census Bureau shows is paid for the same class
of labor in the United States cigar factories.

S. Doc. 530, 60-I——2

18 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The testimony from the Philippines shows that the growers of
tobacco are averaging $60 in gold net profit per acre, which is far in
excess of what our tobacco farmers are able to make. Last year we
imported tobacco and cigars to the value of $16,331,535.70.

In the census year 1900, 308,317 American farmers, scattered
through 48 States, planted 1,101,483 acres to tobacco and produced a
crop of 868,000,000 pounds, which had a farm value of $80,000,000.
We have 15,000 tobacco manufacturers, employing $124,00,000 capital
and turning out a product valued at over $283,000,000.

We have 15,000 cigar manufacturers, who employ $67,000,000 of
capital and turn out a product valued at $160,000,000. The cigar
and tobacco factories employ 245,000 wage-earners, whose wages
amount to $110,000,000 a year. Our tobacco is mostly grown and
manufactured east of the trans-Mississippi country, but it is grown
back where we came from, it is grown by our own flesh and blood, it
is manufactured by well-paid American labor, and it is a commercial
advantage to all of us to have it produced in this country.

As illustrating the brains, the skill, the energy, the honesty of pur-
pose, and the love of country now being exercised in behalf of the
welfare of this great agricultural people, and which would be at
least partially nullified by unwise legislation, let me cite you an in-
stance connected with the subject in question:

A few years ago the present Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. James
Wilson, determined that, if possible, we should grow in the United
States all the tobacco we consume. He dispatched one of his tobacco
scientists to the island of Sumatra to study their soil, climate, and
processes for a year. On the return of this scientist the Secretary
started a search for the American soil corresponding most closely
with the Sumatra soil which produced their finest grades of tobacco. °
It was found in the Connecticut Valley and in Florida. Experi-
mental stations were established in Connecticut, with the purpose of
producing the Sumatra climate.

An acre. of ground was tented over with mesh wire and cheese
cloth, supported by posts 9 feet high, the cloth running down to the
ground on all sides. Under this tent the Sumatra tobacco grew to
perfection, and brought $2 a pound, as compared with a few cents a
pound for tobacco grown near by in the open air.

The expense of production was about $700 per acre, the income
$1,500, and the next year planters covered 36 acres. This year 1,000
acres have been covered.

Sumatra tobacco usually grows to a height of 34 to 5 feet. The
tents under which this tobacco is grown are 9 feet from the ground, |
and in some instances the tobacco poked its way clear through the
covering, while the leaves are exceedingly broad and thin and of the
finest grade and texture.

Furthermore, it ordinarily takes one man to 23 to 3 acres to
destroy the tobacco worms and fleas. Under the tents they have
been troubled with neither of these pests. The Secretary of Agri-
culture is firmly convinced that within five to eight years we shall
be growing all of the $6,000,000 worth of Sumatra leaf which we are
now annually importing.

Not content with the success which attended the efforts of his
experts in growing our wrapper tobacco, the Secretary has since had
his experts investigating possibilities of producing the fine Cuban

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 19

filler tobacco. Favorable soils were discovered in Ohio and Texas,
which last year produced such satisfactory results that the Secretary
confidently predicts that within a very few years we shall not be
obliged to send a dollar abroad for tobacco, but will produce at
home the very choicest grades.

It would thus seem that within a comparatively short time the
American market for foreign tobacco will be a thing of the past,
unless killed by some new competition. This is but one of scores of
instances which I could mention where the present Secretary of
Agriculture is striving to enable us to produce at home those things
which can be grown in the temperate zone which we do not now
produce, and he is striving just as hard to show our little brown
men how to produce to the best advantage those things which we
can never hope to produce at home. That is what I call statesman-
ship, and it is justice to all, at home and in our island possessions.

BULBS.

Another instance of this intelligent work will be of especial inter-
est to my local hearers. We annually import about $750,000 worth
of bulbs. They come largely from Holland and are often dieased.
The Secretary of Agriculture sent an expert out some time since
to see if some place could not be discovered in the United States
where these bulbs could be grown. He traveled in many directions
and finally landed in the great State of Washington.

The very latest development in the Department of Agriculture,
as I left Washington City a few months ago, was the establishment
of the fact that here in the State of Washington we can grow our
own bulbs, free of disease, of the very highest order, and turn our
$750,000 over to the citizens of this State instead of to those of the
Kingdom of Holland. Is that what you gentlemen want, or would
you prefer that they be grown in Holland, or, perhaps, in the
Philippines?

SUGAR PRODUCT OF INTEREST.

The only important Philippine product which I have not yet
mentioned is sugar, and, unlike tobacco, sugar is primarily a trans-
Mississippi product in which practically every delegate to this con-
gress is or should be interested, for the present home industry and
its future expansion will affect every one of your pocketbooks one way
or the other.

In 1901 we produced in the United States proper 991,688,133
pounds of sugar. Of this amount, 864,724,100 pounds, or 87 per cent
of the total, were produced from cane and beets grown in the trans-
Mississippi territory, and hence, as I say, to all intents and purposes
it is strictly a trans-Mississippi industry. Practically without ex-
ception every State in the trans-Mississippi territory can produce
to advantage either cane or beet sugar.

What I mean to show you as to sugar is that under existing con-
ditions the trans-Mississippi territory can and will soon produce
the bulk of the 2,500,000 tons of sugar which the United States proper
now imports, and that by so doing we, the West, can add $250,000,000
annually to our wealth. .

20 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

I also mean to show that should Congress accede to the present de-
mands of the Philippine Commission for the free entry of their
sugar to American ports, for the introduction of contract coolie
labor in the Philippines, and that vast tracts of the Filipinos’ lands
be granted to sugar corporations, it is inevitable that further material
growth of the sugar industry in the trans-Mississippi territory must
cease and that eventually the $120,000,000 to $130,000,000 already
invested in the industry in the trans-Mississippi territory will be
abandoned.

In 1893 the Philippines exported 261,519 tons of sugar, 100,000
tons more than all of the trans-Mississippi beet sugar factories pro-
duced in 1901.

Owing to the insurrection and the ravages of the rinderpest, the
Philippine exports had fallen to 55,399 in 1901, but had increased
to 108,000 tons in 1902, and the indications are that the 1903 exports
will exceed 150,000 tons.

This, however, is as nothing. Her 260,000 tons were as nothing.
While we make nearly 500,000 tons at home, our annual importations
amount to 2,500,000 tons, which amounts to one-quarter of the world’s
production.

The government experts in the Philippines assert that they have
a sufficient area of the finest sugar land in the world, excelling even
that of Cuba, Hawaii, and Java, to produce all the sugar the world
consumes. Possessing the first requisite for cheap production, fertile
sugar land, they also possess the second, cheap labor, which enables
them to produce sugar at an exceedingly low cost. The lowest
cost of production in Germany is 2 cents per pound. In the United
States, on account of well-paid labor, it costs from 3 cents to 4 cents,
depending upon local conditions.

In the Philippines, in 1896, the average cost of production by the
Sugar Estates Development Company, the largest producers in the
islands, who had 20,999 acres in cane and produced 37,000 tons of
sugar, was 95 cents per 100 pounds. This concern further states that
on a small experimental tract which they gave more than usual care,
they produced it at a cost of 624 cents per 100 pounds.

I have already alluded to the crude methods of planting and har-
vesting by hand, without tools or implements of any kind. As to
the process of manufacturing, I will quote from reports by the Phil-
ippine Commission and the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War
Department:

“The regulation sugar mill is constructed of bamboo, but very
many are made of stone and roofed with sheet metal or with
nipa. * * * Jn the manufacture of sugar the best methods are
not generally employed. The natives extract the juice by means of
mills of stone, wood, or iron, these being called trapiches. (Usually
operated by buffalo power.)

“The juice is then collected and boiled in kettles, a little lime being
added to purify it. When the boiling has reached a certain point,
which is recognized by those who are expert, it is passed on to a sec-
ond kettle, where the boiling is continued until it reaches a certain
temperature. It is then poured into conical molds, which are placed
upright, so that the molasses may drain off. These molds are placed
over small jars, where they remain until the sugar has formed, 1t now
being free from molasses.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 21
“ MANY MILLS REFITTED.

“Hundreds of these partly burned mills have been restored for
active services by replacing the roof and cleaning and overhauling
the machinery. A number of Americans have been able to buy these
deserted mills at ridiculously low prices, and they are making a good
thing out of the investment. The old animal traction machines are
usually exchanged for new devices, but even with the old apparatus
money is made. The American owner hires an experienced Filipino
or Spanish overseer to manage things, and he usually does well.

“Prices are low, usually 2 cents or 24 cents per pound (1 cent to
14 cents in American money—the present f. o. b. Philippine price,
June 15, is $1.56 per 100 pounds). But the cost of production is also
small, so that profits are good. Nearly all of the sugar planters,
refiners, and candy makers of the islands with whom I met appeared
to flourish. I know that many of the planters have their servants
and wheeled vehicles and their bank accounts.”

RECOMMENDATIONS OF PHILIPPINE COMMISSION.

In the last annual report of the Philippine Commission under date
of Novemeber 1, 1902, six special requests are made, three of which
interest the trans-Mississippi territory, and which I herewith produce:

First recommendation :

1. The establishment of a gold standard in these lands upon the plan recom-
mended by the Commission in the report ef last year, and of banking corpora-
tions empowered to issue circulating bank notes under proper safeguards.

Congress has already acceded to this demand, and the new 50-cent
dollars are now being used in the islands.

If other things were equal, this act alone would give them labor at
one-half what it costs us.

Recommendation No. 2:

2. The reduction of at least 75 per cent of the Dingley rates of duties upon
goods imported into the United States from the Philippine Islands.

Philippine tariff reduction is a broad sounding term, but inasmuch
as her coffee, rubber, hemp, sisal grass, copra, copal and other gums,
cabinet woods, shells, cacao, and indigo, which form practically all
of the Philippine exports except sugar and tobacco, already come in
duty free, it is plain to be seen that this is simply and solely a request
for a reduction of duty on these two competitive products.

Recommendation No. 3: /

3. An amendment of the Philippine act so that the limit upon lands which
may be sold to or held by individuals or corporations from the public domain
shall be increased from 1,024 hectares to 25,000 acres, or, in the alternative,
so that the government shall be given the power to lease for sixty years upon
competitive bidding tracts from the public land aggregating in any individual
or corporate lessee not more than 30,000.

These vast tracts are not desired or needed for anything except to
create enormous tropical sugar estates for exploitation. As proof of
what it is wanted for I will quote from Governor Taft’s testimony
before the insular committee as follows:

With reference to the sugar lands, I understand in Cuba there are planta-

tions of 20,000 acres. The limitation inserted in this bill was 5,000 acres.
I think that is too small.

99 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Mr. WiLuiAMs of Illinois. What number would you suggest?
Governor Tarr. Twenty thousand acres might be a fair limitation; that is
for sugar lands.

And again:

Then with respect to the selling of large tracts, if the islands are to be de-
veloped in the sugar industry, the limitation upon the number of acres that can
be sold to any one company ought to be determined with reference to the cost
of the plant. I observe that the law limits it to 5,000 acres. I should think that
land can be sold at auction with the minimum price, but without bringing about
an abuse I think the limit might be raised to the limit of the sugar plantations
in Cuba that are profitably worked.

The next recommendation is for the introduction of contract coolie
Chinese labor to compete with, still further reduce the wage rate of,
and take the work away from the Filipino. Before quoting the rec-
ommendation I will quote from the testimony of Gen. Luke E. Wright,
vice-governor of the Philippines, as given before the Senate Com-
mittee on the Philippines, December 9, 1902:

Senator Burrows. Then do I understand that owing to labor conditions the
development of the sugar industry would be retarded?

General WricHtT. It would be slow.

Senator Burrows. And it would be necessary to admit cheap labor, Chinese
Jabor, in order to make it profitable?

General WricHT. Yes, sir.

Senator Burrows. If that cheap labor were admitted, to what extent might
that industry be developed?

General WricHt. Oh, indefinitely. The islands are very rich, and both climate
and soil favor the production of sugar on a large scale. There is no doubt about
that.

Senator DuBors. Do you know how much sugar they can produce per acre as
compared, we will say, with Hawaii?

General WRIGHT. By the same methods of intensive farming as are used in
Hawaii? P

Senator DuBors. Yes.

General WricHt. I should say they would produce as much. I am inclined
to think the soil in the Philippines is fully as good and probably better.

Senator DuBois. That is about three times aS much as we can produce per
acre in Louisiana.

The recommendation for the introduction of contract coolie Chinese
labor is as follows:

That an amendment be made to the Chinese exclusion act, giving power to
the Government by law to admit a fixed and limited number of Chinamen into
the Philippine Islands, who are certified to be skilled laborers, on the bond of
the employer that for every Chinese skilled laborer employed he will employ a
Filipino apprentice, and that he will return the Chinese skilled laborer thus
introduced within five years after his admission to the country, and that he shall
pay a head tax of not exceeding $50 for each Chinaman so admitted, to the
insular government, to meet the expenses-incident to the enforcement of these
restrictions.

There you have the whole matter in a nutshell. In the first place
the land is as rich as that of Hawaii and will produce three times as
much sugar per acre as those of Louisiana and: Texas or the best lands
of the trans-Mississippi territory.

Second. It exists in limitless quantities.

Third. They already have several million natives who work for a
song.

Fourth. They asked for and got a 50-cent dollar with which to pay
their laborers and thus make 50 cents pay for as much sweat as 100
cents would if they used our currency, which can hardly be said to
be in the interests of the Filipino people.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 23

Fifth. They already get a 25-cent reduction from our tariff rates
and are demanding a 75-cent reduction.

Sixth. They ask that the present restriction of 2,500 acres of land
which can be held by a single corporation be raised to 25,000 acres, or
30,000 acres if leased, which would seem to favor the corporation
instead of the people.

Seventh. That they be allowed to bring Chinamen in under con-
tract because they will work even cheaper and harder than will the
Filipinos, and will tend to depress the Filipino wage rate, which
surely is not in the interest of the Filipino people. Grant these re-
quests and it does not take much of an imagination to foresee the
results, a vast tropical sugar estate worked by semislave underpaid
natives and contract coolie Chinese. You can not accuse these high-
minded American officials in the Philippines of doing their work
underhandedly, not for a moment. Governor Taft frankly says:

GOVERNOR TAFT’S TESTIMONY.

Our recommendations are based upon our views of the needs of the Philippine
Islands and the benefit to the trade of those islands. We are asking as much
as we can get, because the more we get the better we think it will be for the
islands. The effect upon the policy of the United States and particular interests
in the United States that will be affected we have very little knowledge of and
desire to express no opinion.

Senator PATTERSON. You would not knowingly advocate any policy that would
injure the industries of the United States—your own country?

Governor Tart. I do not think I would. We do not approach it from the
standpoint of those interests, however.

Governor Tarr. Of course, these questions are usually settled by compromise,
so as to injure home industries as little as possible and encourage new indus-
tries as much as possible. I do not profess to state the opinion of the commis-
sion on such a question. We are doing the best we can to develop the islands,
and we want to get from Congress and all opposing interests as much as we
ean.

Vice-Governor Wright does not even contend that this policy which
they recommend is sound. In his testimony before the Philippine
committee he said:

Of course, I do not think it is proper for me to go into the question of the
soundness of a policy of that sort. That is a matter, of course, for Congress,
with which I have nothing to do.

They have no hesitation in telling Congress what they want and
frankly state that they are not looking after American interests. We
have the same right and should exercise it before it shall be too late.
If you do not think this matter is to be pushed persistently before
Congress and the Administration, read the first cablegram that came
over the newly laid cable from Governor Taft to the President of the
United States on July 4. Here is about a third of it:

It is not inappropriate to incorporate in this the first message from the Philip-
pines to America an earnest plea for the reduction of the tariff on Filipino
products (sugar and tobacco) in accordance with the broad and liberal spirit
which the American people desire to manifest toward the Filipinos.

And if this not enough, consider the following from President

Green, of the American Chamber of Commerce at Manila, to the
President of the United States:
May your Administration speedily accomplish abolition of a tariff and tem-

porary admission of competent labor (Chinese coolies under contract), without
which Philippines can not prosper.

24 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Forewarned is forearmed. The continuation of present conditions
will mean much to the trans-Mississippi territory, and will mean
that the Philippines will be developed by means of small farms for
the benefit of the Filipino people, and that they will eventually pro-
duce for us those tropical products for which we now annually send
$150,000,000 to foreign countries.

NATIONAIs RECLAMATION ACT.

We have passed a national irrigation act; we are about to reclaim
vast stretches of desert, and as true as I stand here, unless an almost
superhuman effort is made, we are about to have passed Philippine
legislation which will largely nullify the effect of the law we have
have worked so hard to secure.

A member of his Cabinet, one well posted on this subject, said to
President Roosevelt the day he signed the irrigation law:

“Mr. President, the passage of that act solves the matter of pro-
ducing at home all the sugar our people consume.”

“ Why so?” said the President.

“ Because,” said the Cabinet officer, “ wherever the Government
builds a dam there will be erected at once one or more beet sugar
factories, for beets are the greatest crop which they can grow under
irrigation and ship out the product to our great centers of population
in the East.”

In five different trans-Mississippi States the Federal Government
is to-day preparing to spend millions of dollars to put hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of acres under the ditch.

When these dams shall have been built and reservoirs filled with
water and the head gates shall be ready to be opened, what shall we
plant or sow under irrigation, the surplus product of which we can
profitably transport to great centers of eastern population ?

Can we raise 2,500,000 acres of wheat under irrigation, pay freight
charges, and compete in the world’s markets with those who raise
wheat without irrigation ?

Can we raise and market the other great staples of the East: Corn,
oats, rye, barley, hay? We can raise several crops of alfalfa a year,
but we can not ship it to market. Can we devote 2,500,000 acres
to poultry, the great barn yard crop of the East, and market our
product?

Could we put 2,500,000 acres into vegetables or fruits and not glut
the market ?

No. I tell you, my friends, we can grow any temperate zone crop
on earth, but there are few we can ship out to advantage, while the
eastern farmer has a market at his door for every pound of every-
thing he can procure.

While the market for all other crops is limited or unprofitable on
account of long-haul freight charges, we have in the United States
to-day a profitable market for all the sugar which can be produced
from all the beets we can grow on 2,500,000 acres of these desert
lands the Government is going to reclaim. Think of it, a profitable
market awaiting us for all we can produce from 2,500,000 acres of
desert lands. Shall we without a protest allow this stupendous
market to be taken away from us and frittered away on a mere

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF. THE UNITED STATES. 25

sentimentality for a people to whom we are also giving an American
market for $150,000,000 worth of products which we can not produce?
Is not that enough? Must we also give them the American market
for the one great crop which we can profitably grow to the full extent
of our ability? I hope not. While we all realize our possibilities let
us also realize our limitations and restrictions.
I have given you the cost of production with the crude field and
factory methods in the Philippines.

FREIGHT RATES.

Now as to freight rates.

As the trans-Mississippi territory manufactures practically all
the sugar which its inhabitants consume, the 9,500,000 tons which we
annually import is for eastern consumption and must be marketed
there, whether produced in the trans-Mississippi territory or in the
Philippines.

Geographically, the Philippines are 7,000 miles from our shores.
Commercially, they are 25 to 37 cents per hundred pounds from New
York Harbor. It costs more to ship sugar from Omaha and Kansas
City to New York than it does from the Philippines, and conse-
quently, commercially speaking, Manila is closer to New York than
is the trans-Mississippi territory.

Hence, if we abolish the duty on Philippine sugar and in other

ways oreatly encourage its production in those islands, the price
which the trans-Mississippi farmer and manufacturer must meet will
be the f. o. b. Philippine price plus the cost of 50 cents per hundred
for refining, plus the profit of the eastern refiners.

Tt will thus be seen that in order to drive home-grown sugar out of
the market, refined Philippine sugar could be marketed throughout
the East at a cost of 14 to 12 cents per pound. Not that consumers,
except perhaps periodically, would be able to purchase their sugar
for any less than they do now, but that is the price which could be
made without loss to those making it to check and ruin this most
promising trans-Mississippi industry.

Owing to the high price paid the American farmer for beets and
the high price of American factory labor, it now costs us from 3
to 4 cents per pound to produce granulated sugar, as aginst 6 cents
per pound a few years ago. Further, economists will eventually
bring the cost down to between 2 and 3 cents per pound, giving the
consumer sugar at 3 to 4 cents per pound, as aginst the present price
of 5 to 6 cents per pound and a lke price in the future if the Philip-
pines are to be operated by a few gigantic friendly corporations.

UNITED STATES SUGAR POSSIBILITIES.

The next question is, Can we produce it if given a chance? To
produce 2,500,000 tons of sugar would require the planting of less
than 2,500,000 acres of beets or Louisiana or Texas cane, for the yield
is over.a ton of sugar to the acre.

Have we got the land? Why, almost anyone of the trans-Missis-
sipp1 States could put 2,500,000 acres to cane or beets and never
miss it.

26 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Let me call the roll of the trans-Mississippi States and Territories
which are already producing sugar. There are nine of them: Cali-
fornia, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota,
Louisiana, and Texas. In these States there is invested in the indus-
try over $125,000,000, and the annual product is nearly 500,000 tons,
or one-fifth of the amount we annually import.

Already producing nearly 500,000 tons of sugar and being able
to produce the 2,500,000 which the American people consume, the
next question is as to whether or not our trans-Mississippi farmers
and capitalists are anxious to extend the industry.

Besides the many new factories being erected in our sugar-produc-
ing States, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona have raised the money and
decided to build for next season, while Nevada, Montana, Kansas,
Jowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota are taking steps to build,
leaving only five States and Territories of the entire trans-Missis-
sippi country where, so far as I know, no move.is being made to join
the ranks of sugar-producing States.

Having shown that we can produce in the trans-Mississippi terri-
tory that 2,500,000 tons of sugar which we now annually import,
that we are already producing nearly 500,000 tons annually, that
nearly one-half of our States are already engaged in the production,
that others are preparing to enter the field and still others are
anxious to enter it, the next question is, What would it be worth to
our merchants, our farmers, our real estate men, our capitalists, our
laboring men, our railroads, and our people generally ?

In the first place, it would mean the erection of 600 new factories
at an initial cost of $300,000,000, thus giving profitable employment
to that amount of western and eastern capital.

Our trans-Mississippi farmers would have their incomes increased
by $125,000,000 a year for growing 25,000,000 tons of beets at $5
per ton. Our mechanics and laborers would get $34,000,000 a year,
our coal mines would get $14,000,000, our coke ovens $10,000,000, and
so on all down the line, the entire 2,500,000 tons returning us
annually the enormous sum of $250,000,000 at 5 cents per pound.

Last year I showed this Congress that where beet-sugar factories
had been erected in the trans-Mississippi territory the assessed valu-
ations of town property had increased on an average of 139 per cent,
population 894 per cent, value of residence lots 59 per cent, of business
lots 188 per cent, and that the condition of all trade and farming
interests had been improved almost beyond computation.

I wish now to call your attention to what it does for these great
railroads which have been such a factor in building up the trans-
Mississippi territory.

The manager of a small factory in the East gave me the following
memorandum of what he paid out in freight last year:

30;000' tons of. beets. 2 wae gee eS Us ee at ae $22, 500
G:000jtons of coalesce ee ee eee .9, 000
3.000: tons: of lime rock: 22 * oe uae Vike ee A ee A eee 8, 000
2 000:tons of molasaes2. 2 22.2 eh pe ae Oe eS De eee eee 6, 000
20;000"tonS.of pulp = 22 ee Se ee ee 12, 000
8,000000: pounds: of isugarst.= 2-2) 22 Nee Ce oe ee eee ee ee 9, 600
Coke; Time;seed, Supplies; ‘ete. ==> 2 Sask s aie: he eee eee 1, 500

Noted, 2 ae es Hal Le, 2 ca 63, 600

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 27

And, as I say, this was a small factory. Last year the factory
at Oxnard, Cal., paid out for freight the enormous sum of $540,000.
This is what the factory management paid out for freight. It does
not include what was paid out by the merchants, of whom there were
none until the factory was erected there. The amount of money
which the railroads receive from a town for freight affords a pretty
fair basis by which to judge of the town’s prosperity and I will give
you an illustration.

ATTRACTS THE PEOPLE.

In 1899 the entire freight receipts of the Santa Fe Railroad from
Rocky Ford, Colo., amounted to $97,000.

In 1900 the American Beet Sugar Company erected a beet-sugar
factory there. .

In 1902, two years later, the town had grown from 1,500 to 2,500
people, 400 new buildings had been erected, and the freight receipts
of the Santa Fe road had jumped from $97,000 to almost $600,000,
an increase of over 500 per cent in two years. Anyone in the habit of
studying industrial conditions can easily imagine the tremendous in-
crease of business which the location of this factory brought to Rocky
Ford.

To locate 600 new factories in the trans-Mississippi territory, bas-
ing the increase on the outfreight alone from Rocky Ford, would
mean that our great western railroads would secure in increased
freights $300,000,000 annually. If those 600 factories are erected in
the Philippines neither you nor the railroads will get a cent out of it,
for the Philippine sugar will all go direct to the eastern seaboard to
be refined, just as it has in the past.

The question is, Shall we erect 600 new sugar factories in the
Philippine Islands or in the trans-Mississippi territory ?

Would the gentlemen living in the sugar towns of California,
Utah, Colorado, and other trans-Mississippi territory like to see
their sugar factories transported to the Philippines? Would the
gentlemen from the Salt River Valley prefer to see their new sugar
factory, now being erected at Glendale, abandoned and shipped to
the Philippines?

How about the factories now being erected at Fort Collins, Wind-
sor, and Longmont, Colo.; at Idaho Falls and at Garland, Utah?
How about the projected factories at Wheatland, Wyo.; at Fountain,
Sterling, Brighton, Denver, Lamar, and Fort Morgan, Colo.; at Gar-
den City, Kans.; at Hershey and North Platte, Nebr.; at Blackfoot,
Boise City, Caldwell, and Lewiston, Idaho; at Prosser and at Ya-
kima in this State, and the scores of other projected plants in the
trans-Mississippi territory ?

Does anyone suppose for a minute if we enable granulated sugar
from the Philippines to be laid down at a cost of 1} to 2 cents per
pound, while it costs from 3 to 4 cents to produce it in this country,
that eapital will continue to flow in to the home industry and develop
the trans-Mississippi territory ? :

I think there can be no question as to both our desire and our abil-
ity to produce this $250,000,000 worth of sugar in this trans-Missis-
sippi territory, or of their ability to produce it at a still lower cost
in the Philippines.

28 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The remaining question on this subject is, Will our legislators yield
to the demands coming from the Philippines and enact such legisla-
tion as will steal from you this great industry, transfer it to the
Oe rob the Filipinos of their lands, and enslave them for
ife ?

WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR THE PHILIPPINES.

And so a word as to what we have done for the Philippines legis-
latively and as to what the Philippine Commission is asking us to do,
and I will close. American products entering Philippine ports pay
the same duty as is paid on like products from all other countries.
When the rinderpest and surra decimated the ranks of their work
animals the American Congress appropriated $3,000,000 and handed
it over for their relief.

The Department of Agriculture has established a most efficient
scientific station in the Philippines to teach the natives American
agricultural science. March 8, 1902, Congress reduced the tariff on
Philippine products entering the United States to 75 per cent of the
duty collected on like products coming from other countries.

All customs collected on Philippine products entering the United
States are converted into a special fund, “ and paid into the treasury
of the Philippine Islands, to be used and expended for the govern-
ment and benefit of said islands,” thus reducing their local taxation
by that amount.

Philippine products destined for the United States are not subject
to any export taxes, the producers or shippers thus securing a double
advantage. 4

July 1, 1902, Congress passed an act authorizing the Philippine
government to issue bonds for the purchase of the friar lands which
had given them so much trouble.

In the same act Congress restricted the ownership of land by any
one corporation to 1,024 hectares, or 2,500 acres, thus preventing the
absorption of the public domain by a few large exploiting corpora-
tions.

Congress also authorized the Philippine government to coin and
issue 50-cent dollars, inasrhuch as the employers of labor had been in
the habit of paying them off in Mexican 50-cent dollars, and it was
represented that if obliged to pay their labor in standard dollars it
would double the price of wages, which might be of great advantage
to the people generally, but which it was represented would be ruin-
ous to those who employed them.

In brief, this covers the most.important legislation which we have
enacted for the islands.

NEW LEGISLATION ASKED FOR.

It is not to be supposed that the “little brown men ” of the Philip-
pines are the animus for the prolific demands which have been and
are being made on this Government. This is not the case. They are
to be the victims as well as you. They come from a source more cun-
ning, more scheming, from men of our own soil, color, flesh, and
blood. Men in hiding when the nation needs them. Parasites in
times of peace and coast wreckers in times of distress, wolves who
hover in darkness, attracted by the scent of spoils.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 29

I am not referring to legitimate capital, which has been one of the
most potent factors in developing America, both East and West. I
am referring to that class of capital which asks for special legislation
and special favors from the Government which will enable its owners
to thrive and fatten at the expense of their fellow-men and the in-
dustries of their country.

When you lent your influence, your money, your blood, and your
treasury freely and magnanimously to those Spanish isles of both
Indies, purely in the interest of humanity, you might have been par-
doned the feeling that a debt of gratitude had been created. There

ought to have been no question as to who was the creditor and who
the debtor.

After freely spending something over $350,000,000 in this laudable
purpose, is it not a little presumptuous to find so closely following
this event, with the details still fresh, that you are the debtor, your
industries mortgaged in addition and foreclosure proceedings begun.
You were content to sleep on your laurels for a good deed done. You
are to awake and find that instead of a recommendation you have
signed a promissory note.

They are now asking in the Philippines for a right to buy large
tracts, to import contract labor from China and other coolie districts,
concessions of tariff, 50-cent dollars with which to pay their laborers,
and large appropriations for improvements and little or no internal
taxes, and in addition ask for your market.

This means that the native Filipino will not be able to get the land
or have a home. He is to work for coole wages and be paid with a
50-cent dollar. This all to take place in the name of humanity and
under Old Glory. Now, these are the loyal, frugal capitalists of our
own country. They could invest in the development of the resources
of their own country, for opportunities are on every hand. The arid
West would absorb many millions of it and return a good profit.

But this would require the payment of civilized wages and the ex-
penses of other civilized conditions. They prefer to go outside, and
by schemes and pulls avoid any contribution to our labor or institu-
tions. They are not creative of any labor or wealth, benefits to our
system, but ask to come in and enjoy with the rest of you the markets
justly belonging to you who are the brawn and sinew of the country’s
resources and the loyal guardians of its power.

With Philippine labor to be had for almost nothing and paid in a
debased currency, remove or greatly reduce the tariff on Philippine
sugar and you will practically nullify the effect of the national irri-
gation law, for the production of our sugar will bring us more wealth
than all of our other irrigated agricultural products put together.

I am arguing neither protection nor free trade, but as long as the
smokestacks of New England are protected from the pauper and
semislate labor of the world, the fields of the trans-Mississippi ter-
ritory are entitled to like protection from both Europe and the
Orient.

Let us encourage our “ little brown men” to produce those vast
quantities of purely tropical products which we can never produce,
and let us hand down to the posterity of the trans-Mississippi ter-
ritory the magnificent inheritance of producing the sugar which the
American people consume.

30 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. —

PHILIPPINE TARIFF LEGISLATION AND ITS EFFECT ON IRRIGATION AND
BEET SUGAR.

[Address before the eleventh annual session of the National Irrigation Congress, held at
Ogden, Utah, September 15-18, 1903.]

The United States is a great country. I have often wondered
what must be the impressions of Britishers who, for the first time
leave their island, land at New York and, without lay-overs, travel
through to the Pacific coast. I recently made this observation to a
prominent Englishman I was entertaining and he said he could at
least inform me as to the conclusion of one of them. Two of his un-
traveled countrymen arrived at New York and began the trip in
question. They traveled on and on, day after day, and finally, when
they were out somewhere between Cheyenne and Ogden, one of them,
who had apparently been in a brown study for some minutes, re-
marked in all seriousness to the other: “ James, do you know I have
lost all my admiration for Columbus? A man who could fail to dis-
cover this country would be a damned fool, don’t you know?”

It is not an unusual thing for all-wise Providence to reserve the
greatest blessings and bestow them on this latter-day people.

This great country, the richest of all the earth in natural resources,
was absolutely unknown to all the wise men of the world until a few
centuries ago. .

Our forefathers who landed on and populated our eastern shores
were content with their new home, and for generations knew literally
nothing about the country to the west of the Allegheny Mountains.
I regret to say that many of their offspring still know just about as
much about it as did their great-great-grand fathers.

The school geographies of my boyhood classed the entire western
portion of the Mississippi Valley as the Great American Desert, and
the country to the west of the Mississippi Valley was considered as
being practically worthless.

To-day I have numberless eastern-born friends living on the Pa-
cific coast who will not admit that the Lord ever got east of the
Rocky Mountains.

Eastern people still yarn it on us. A few years ago Bob Ingersoll
and Doctor Talmadge happened to be going overland on the same
train. As they neared the Needles, Ingersoll turned to Talmadge
and inquired: “ Doctor, you say the Bible says the Lord made the
earth in six days?” “ Yes, sir.” “And you believe it?” “ Yes, sir.”
“And that on the seventh day He rested?” “ Yes, sir.” “And you
believe it?” “ Yes, sir.” “ Well, Doctor, don’t you think it would
have been a good plan and that this would have been a good place
for Him to have put in that other day working?”

Whatever the relative advantages of the East and West may be,
we know that no fences or gates are necessary to prevent the.western
people from flocking to the East, while all the fences and gates that
could be erected would not suffice to keep many well-informed east-
ern people from migrating to the West.

This arid western America is destined to become the richest and
most highly civilized portion of the globe.

_ -_Tt isa significant fact that practically all of the great ancient civi-
lizations of the world had their birth in irrigated countries, where
a given area will support the greatest number of people. The Baby-

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 31

lonians, Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians, and others were cradled
in the sands of the desert.

Arid America possesses all the advantages of other desert countries
and the additional, overwhelming, tremendous advantage of being
not in or near the Tropics, but in the North Temperate zone, the zone
which is the natural habitat of the Anglo Saxon race, which for
centuries past has furnished the brawn and sinew and the brains of
the world. Arid America has the still further advantage that it is
not separated by sea, but hes alongside of and is part and parcel of
the home territory of the greatest, the richest, the most progressive
branch of the Anglo Saxon race, the American people.

Great Britain colonizes in the far away deserts of Africa, of India,
of Australia, all located in latitudes different from that of the mother
country.

The American colonist boards a modern railroad train and soon
reaches, in the same latitude he was raised in, if he lkes, the New
Eldorado of arid America.

My friends and fellow-workers for arid America, these are my
reasons for predicting such a brilliant future for this country we all
love so well.

As to our possibilities for agricultural development, the late Pro-
fessor Powell of the Smithsonian Institution, than whom there was no
better posted man on the subject, stated that in arid America we have
enough arable land and enough water to, when married, support in
affluence—in affluence, mind you—70,000,000 of people.

The American Congress, in passing the National Irrigation Act,
issued the license for the marriage of our streams to our deserts.
Through the recent selection made by the Interior Department, the
nuptial ceremony is about to begin in five States and Territories, and
let us all pray that the wedding bells will not cease ringing until
homes shall have been provided for those 70,000,000 of people.

EMIGRATION TO CANADA.

The next question is, where are those 70,000,000 of people to come
from? No less an authority than Senator Allison, of Iowa, esti-
mates that Iowa alone has sent over 30,000 of her sons and daughters
to the Canadian Northwest during the past two years. _

Think of it, while the East is being inundated by a million immi-
grants a year, largely the vicious, ignorant pauper scum of southern
Europe, a single State is annually sending 15,000 of her brightest
flowers to a foreign land, whose immigration agents openly state
‘that they expect an immigration of 300,000 people from the United
States during 1903.

There is no true American who would not prefer to live under the
Stars and Stripes. There is no portion of the British Northwest
which excels arid America as a place in which to live.

As long as semi-arid America has a single unpopulated desert this
state of affairs should be impossible and we must see to it that it is
rectified; that the footsteps of those who are the flower of our land
shall be turned to semi-arid America and not to the British North-
west. To do this we must retain every one of our present advantages
and must devise and offer new ones. It is a subject worthy of our
most careful consideration, and we must and will think it out. As

82 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Commander Booth-Tucker has so plainly pointed out, colonization is
the necessary adjunct of irrigation and without it irrigation is a
failure.

AMERICAN CAPITAL IN CANADA.

The next question is the matter of capital, which is required to in-
duce this colonization and with the colonists develop our resources,
not simply by putting the water on the land, but after the land and
water shall have been married, to produce surplus crops which we
can market. For, if we stop with this marriage, our work will be
abortive, as it has been in many irrigation enterprises throughout
this western country. We must produce something, and we must
produce a surplus of something which we can ship to the East and
trade for those eastern commodities which we must have, and which
we can not produce to advantage. Now as to this necessary capital.
The eastern and Mississippi Valley banks are full of it, and that, also,
is flowing into the country to the north of us. Senator Allison and
others assert that during the past two years not only has the State
of Iowa sent 30,000 people to the British Northwest, but that she has
sent $60,000,000 to the same territory for investment, and this is but
an indication of what other States are doing in the same line.

IT hold in my hand the reports of two of our consuls-general to
Canada, one at Montreal, the other at Fort Erie, one under date of
October 22, 1902, the other under date of June 26, 1903, in which
these American consuls give a list of eighty-four new enterprises
which are being established in Canada by American capital. In the
case of forty-four of these enterprises, among them some of the
largest, the capital is not stated. In the case of the other forty, the
capital is given, and it amounts to the enormous sum of $80,960,500.
The same ratio would show that over $160,000,000 of American
capital is being put into these eighty-four Canadian enterprises, and
this is presumed to be but a mere fraction of what our people are
investing there. Nor is this all. The list contains such names as
Claus Spreckels, Marshall Field, N. B. Ream, George Westinghouse,
Armour, Swift, and others, and they are going into coal, copper,
and iron lands, sugar refining, oil, marble, lumber, water power, agri-
cultural lands, hotels, reduction works, manufacturing, and a multi-
tude of other things which in semi-arid America offer the profitable
investment of capital.

AMERICAN CAPITAL GOING TO THE TROPICS.

Since the Spanish war you have heard comparatively little about
American development investments. Our capital, and many of our
newspapers, seem to be bewitched with other countries. You hear
about reciprocity with Canada and the investment of hundreds of
millions of American money therein. You hear about Porto Rico,
the plantations of which have been purchased by American money.
You hear about Cuba, where $100,000,000 of American money has
purchased 75 per cent of the sugar-producing lands and factories and
all of the large cigar-manufacturing enterprises. You hear about
the Philippines, where American capital is only awaiting the removal
of a few legislative restrictions, when it will be ready for investment

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 33

by hundreds of millions. You hear of all this, you know of all this,
but you hear little about capital in our own country, except in the
consolidation of existing industries into trusts and the merging of
existing railroads, which is not creative, but speculative.

How long is this matter of foreign investment to go on, and the
great possibilities of arid America to be relegated to the background ?

Our capital has virtually absorbed all the Porto Rican industries
and the bulk of the leading industries of Cuba. It will continue to
flow into Canada if not arrested. Three hundred millions of it will
go to develop the sugar industry of the Philippines instead of the
sugar industry of arid America, if the contemplated changes are
made in the present laws. Can we stem the tide and swing these
people and this capital to semi-arid America? I believe so, if we
work asa unit. If we can, then how will we employ those people and
that capital? With all of our advantages we have some disadvan-
tages. First, we can not, under irrigation, produce for shipment
the great eastern staples, such as wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, and
cotton, pay the necessarily high, long-haul freight charges, and com-
pete in the markets of the East, or of the world, with similar prod-
ucts grown in the Mississippi Valley and on the Atlantic coast. The
same is also true of poultry, eggs, butter, and many other crops for
which the eastern farmer finds a ready market at his door for
every surplus pound he raises. We of semi-arid America are barred
from raising these crops, except for our own local use. If the cost of
irrigation did not prevent, the freight charges, to bring our products
to the great centers of population, would, be our railroads ever so
liberal. Not only this, but all of these crops are already being grown
in sufficient quantities not only to supply our nation, but for export
to the extent of over $850,000,000 annually.

BEET SUGAR.

There is one crop we can grow to perfection and in such quantities
as to employ all the people and all the capital we can induce to come
here for many vears to come, and for which we can find a profitable,
ready, home market in the East, which is now supplied by foreign
importations. Last year the United States importations of raw
sugar amounted to over 2,600,000 tons. The cost of this sugar to
the consumer, which includes the cost of the raw product, the cus-
toms tariff, the cost of refining, packages, profits, and brokerage, is,
about 5 cents per pound, or, for the 2,600,000 tons, $260,000,000. No
use for me to expatiate on the superior merits of semi-arid America
as a sugar-producing country; you all know them. Here, then, is a
profitable home market awaiting us for $260,000,000 worth of one
crop we can grow to perfection under irrigation. Now, what else can
we produce in great quantities and find for it a profitable home
market? Coming over from Los Angeles I heard an Arizona dele-
gate extolling the Salt River Valley as a cantaloupe country. Said
they could produce all the cantaloupes the eastern people could con-
sume and that the producers could set their own price. I agree with
the first part of the statement, but how many million dollars’ worth
of cantaloupes could be marketed before the market would be

S. Doc. 530, 60-1

9
oO

34 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

glutted? Two hundred and sixty million dollars’ worth of canta-
loupes would feed the American people for many, many years; prob-
ably for more years than any of us will live. Another delegate
would turn semi-arid America into a great stock ranch, but as we
are already large exporters of meats and meat products, we must
compete in foreign markets with Argentina and other countries.
Still another delegate was figuring on sending vast quantities of po-
tatoes and other vegetables to our eastern markets. Another was im-
bued with the idea of raising fruit, but, with the exception of a few
specialties, the East raises all the fruit it consumes. All of these
ideas are excellent, and we should expand the production of every
one of these products; but let us not deceive ourselves as to the extent
of the market. The present profitable home market for sugar is
greater than it 1s for all other things combined which we can pro-
duce—yes, many times over.

PROGRESS OF THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY.

Is the beet sugar industry growing? Fifteen years ago we pro-
duced 1,600 tons of sugar from beets, the first time in our history.
Last year we produced in round numbers 200 000 tons, worth, at
5 cents per pound, $20,000,000. Ten years ago it cost 6 to 10 cents
per pound to produce it. To-day it costs 3 to 4 cents to produce,
while Germany produces it at a cost of 2 cents per pound. Our
tonnage per acre has nearly doubled, the sugar content of our beets
has increased 50 per cent and our. extraction has almost doubled,
while the factory expense has been nearly halved. Every indication
points to a still cheaper cost of production, but it takes time, for it
is a scientific industry from the preparation of the soil to the drying
of the finished product ready for the table. In the whole history
of the industry not a single American factory has started up with a
full run of beets, a full” complement of skilled farmers, or a full
complement of experienced factory operatives. ~All have to be
trained and each locality presents its own peculiar conditions, which
experience only can master. Nevertheless, while we had but 6 fac-
tories six years ago, we now have 54—largely in the West—and
others are projected. Asa rule the irrigation farmers can secure far
greater returns from the culture of sugar beets than from any other
important crop. Capital invested in beet sugar factories yields a
good return on the investment. The location of a factory doubles
and quadruples the value of the contiguous farm lands and town
lots, and builds up flourishing towns in Y which the merchants, bank-
ers, and real estate men and others are universally prosperous.

I venture the assertion that there is not a delegate here from
semi-arid America who would not contribute several hundred dollars
from his own resources to secure the erection of a beet sugar factory
in his home town. Without question this industry is the ereatest in-
heritance of the farmer, merchant, and capitalist of semi-arid
America. Five to six hundred factories will be required to produce
the two and a half million tons of sugar which we now import an-
nually and the sugar beet territory extends from our eastern limits to
the Pacific and from British Columbia to the Republic of Mexico,
hence we are all interested in it and all have a chance to get our pro-
portion of those 600 factories.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 35
PHILIPPINE MENACE.

I will say, however, that this great inheritance is in jeopardy and
without united action we are liable to lose it.

In the Philippine Islands there is enough well defined cane sugar
land to supply the entire world with all the sugar it consumes. The
islands have exported in a single year more sugar than all of our
fifty-four beet sugar factories produced last year. With labor at
8 to 10 cents per diem, the largest sugar corporation in the island
was able in 1896 to produce sugar from 22,000 acres of cane at a
cost of 95 cents per 100 pounds, while from an experimental plot
they produced it at a cost of 62 cents per 100 pounds. The freight
rate from Manila to New York is but 25 to 374 cents per 100, or less
than the rate on sugar from Omaha or Kansas City to New York.
The islands asked for a reduction of American tariff rates on Philip-
pine sugar and tobacco and Congress granted them a 25 per cent
reduction. The islands asked for a debased currency with which to
pay their ignorant labor and Congress gave them a 50-cent dollar.

Congress is now being importuned to grant them practically free
admission for their sugar and tobacco into the United States mar-
kets; to withdraw the operation of our contract labor laws so far
as the Philippines are concerned, and allow the introduction of con-
tract coolie, Chinese labor, and to increase the number of acres which
a single corporation may hold, from the present limit of 2,500 to
25,000 acres, in order to encourage the establishment of vast sugar
estates, to be operated by the cheapest semislave labor in the world
and compete with our well-paid American labor.

Once let Congress grant the concessions which are now being asked
for the Philippines and the 600 beet sugar factories which we hope
to erect in arid America will be erected in the Philippines and our
sugar will be produced by semislave Asiatics. The princely inheri-
tance of supplying the American people with the $260,000,000 worth
of sugar now grown in foreign lands belongs to arid Ameriga an
not to Asiatic islands, and if we are to save this inheritance we must
let our legislators know that we are claiming it and must fight for
it in the American Congress.

The production of sugar is not as yet a great industry in the Phil-
ippines. At present the value of their sugar exports constitutes but
a mere fraction of their total agricultural exports, of which hemp
alone forms over 69 per cent. We annually consume over $150,000,000
worth of purely tropical products of which we can never hope to
produce a pound, and all of which grow to perfection in the Philip-
pines and form the bulk of her exports.

Without injury to any American industry, we can and should en-
courage the Filipino to produce these noncompetitive products which
we now purchase of other countries and for which we can offer an
unlimited market at all times.

If with or without reason any of our Western Senators or Congress-
men decide to vote for Philippine legislation which is inimical to our
interests, let them do it with their eyes open, fully understanding that
it is against the express wishes, desires, and requests of their constitu-
ents, and let them take the consequences. You can not afford to sit
idly by, lose your greatest industry, and then be told that it was done

36 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

through either ignorance or inadvertence. To be safe, you must put
your legislators on record.

Resolution unanimously adopted by the 1903 congress, assembled at Ogden, Utah,
September 15 to 18.

Whereas the culture of sugar beets is already one of the most important in-
caustries of the arid West; and

Whereas our home market now requires the annual importation of over
$100,000,000 worth of this commodity, the most natural product that can be pro-
duced undér irrigation, and shipped in great quantities to our large centers of
Hastern population; and

Whereas under the national irrigation act the culture of beets will afford
our greatest quick money crop; and

Whereas it is being urged that the United States Congress further stimulate
the sugar industry of the Philippine Islands by reducing our tax upon Philip-
pine sugar, by increasing the present limit of 2,500 acres which individual cor-
porations can now hold to 25,000 acres, and by the introduction of contract
eoolie Chinese labor; therefore be it

Resolved, That we hereby protest against the enactment of any legislation
which will tend to arrest the full development of the American sugar industry
by extending further concessions to the employers of cheap Asiatic labor; that
we are unalterably opposed to the introduction of contract coolie labor wherever
the American flag floats, and that legislative agitation or attacks on the sugar
interests of this country should cease to the end that this great industry may
develop in common with all our other great industries.

IRRIGATION AND BEET SUGAR.

[Address before the fourteenth annual session of the National Irrigation Congress, held
at Boise, Idaho, September 8-8, 1906. ]

The art of modern irrigation can aptly be compared to the various
ranges of mathematics. The early settler who constructed a dirt
ditch that carried but a fraction of the water which flowed by at the
dryest period of the year and allowed the balance of the stream and
all of the flood water to go to waste had scarcely scanned the rudi-
ments of the “ arithmetic of irrigation.”

When vast private capital comes to our aid and we not only utilize
the ordinary flow of our streams, but construct expensive reservoirs
in which to store the flood waters, we may be said to have reached the
algebra of irrigation.

When the Federal Government was induced to turn its attention
to our irrigation problems and not only construct dams and reservoirs
and ditches, but to preserve the forests on our great watersheds and
thereby conserve the moisture, we reached the “ geometry of irri-
gation.”

But geometry is not the highest science of mathematics. 'To master
a still higher form of it, however, it is necessary that one first master
arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, and to master the science of irri-
gation it is also necessary that one first master the more rudimentary
forms of this empire building work.

It is not enough that by forests we shade thg snowfall from the
direct rays of the sun; that as the snow finally melts we impound the
streams in reservoirs; that we lead the waters out over the thirsty

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 37

soil; that we thereby produce in abundance all the crops we need for
local consumption; all this is but the lower mathematics of irriga-
tion. For our comfort and for luxuries we need and must always
need thousands of articles which we do not and will not produce, and
in order to secure those articles we must produce something which
the outside world needs, something for which there is a practically
limitless market, something which we can transport long distances
and there exchange to advantage for the articles we require but do
not produce. The production of such a crop is to the science of irri-
gation what infinitesimal calculus is to mathematics—the very apex,
the crowning glory of the science. A college professor might tie us
all up on infinitesimal calculus as applied to mathematics, and many
of you might tie me up on it, but as applied to irrigation, I propose
to make it so plain in one lesson that “ he who runs may read.”

POPULATION AND TRANSPORTATION.

It was but a few years ago that the center of our population was
located east of the Allegheny Mountains, but it has moved steadily
westward until to-day it is in the center of the Mississippi Valley.
Realizing how small a unit of land will maintain a family in arid
America, I believe the time will come when the United States will
have as great a population under irrigation as under rain conditions,
and then the center of population will be located at the eastern base
of the Rocky Mountains. But unfortunately this will not come in
your time or mine, and in any event we must always transport much
of our surplus crops thousands of miles to eastern markets and ports
of export. We have no problems as to productivity or perfection of
product, and thus it is that our one great problem in the development
of arid America is that of transportation of our surplus products.

PRODUCTIVITY OF ARID AMERICA.

Without fear of contradiction, I venture the assertion that in arid
America we can produce more tonnage to the acre and a superior
quality of each and every agricultural and horticultural product that
is grown in the United States than can be produced in any of the
humid States. We produce practically all farm, garden, and orchard
crops to a perfection rarely dreamed of in other portions of our
domain, but there are only a few of them which it pays to ship out.

Our local market for minor crops is comparatively small, owing to
the fact that the population is sparse and to the further fact that so
large a proportion of our people grow what small crops they consume,
whether they occupy a 10,000-acre ranch or a 50-foot town lot.

We ship out some vegetables and fruit, but the market for anything
but citrus fruit 1s comparatively limited. All America produces
fruits and vegetables, and a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of
any one variety dumped onto the eastern market at one time would
result in reducing the price to such an extent that the product would
not bring enough to pay the freight on it.

As to staples, we can raise more bales of cotton to the acre than
can the South, and far more bushels of wheat, corn, oats, rye, and
barley than can the humid States of the Mississippi Valley. The
average yield of wheat per acre in the United States for the past ten

38 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

years has been 13.4 bushels, and under irrigation we can raise 40 to
60 bushels per acre; of oats 29.1, and we can raise 100 to 125; of bar-
ley 25, and we can raise 75 to 100; of corn 24.9, and we can raise 75
to 100 bushels. We can and do supply all the cereals our local popu-
lation consumes. We ship out a limited quantity of cereals from the
inter-mountain States, but, as a rule, we can not produce these crops
under irrigation, transport them long distances to our great centers
of population, and there sell them at a profit in competition with lke
products raised in the Mississippi Valley.

To-day wheat is worth 70 cents per bushel, or $1.16 per 100 pounds,
in Chicago, but it costs 50 cents per 100, or 43 per cent of its delivered
price, to transport it from Utah to Chicago, leaving the Utah farmer
less than 40 cents per bushel delivered aboard the cars. Barley in
Chicago is worth 38 cents per bushel, or 80 cents per 100 pounds, and
it costs 50 cents per 100, or 62 per cent of its delivered value, to trans-
port it from Utah to Chicago, leaving the Utah grower less than 14
cents per bushel, f. 0. b. Oats are worth 31 cents per bushel, or, say,
$1 per 100, and the freight is 55 cents, leaving the Utah producer less
than 15 cents per bushel for his crop.

The best apples are worth $2.50 per barrel in Chicago, or $1.60 per
100, and the freight is $1 per 100, leaving the grower but 93 cents
per barrel, or less than 23 cents per 40-pound box for his fruit.
Should we be forced to produce these crops in great quantities in
order to exist, doubtless the railroads would eventually grant such
rates as would enable us to market them in Chicago, in New England,
and in Europe in competition with the West and South. This would
mean a narrow margin of profit to us and to the railroads, a sharp
competition with our eastern farmers, the consequent lowering of
price for their staple crops, and the building up of our prosperity
at their expense.

We feel that we have the right to build up and develop arid Amer-
ica, and we are fully determined to do so; but we are neither anxious
nor desirous of waiting a decade for lower freight rates, or of injur-
ing the markets of our eastern friends and brothers by flooding them
with all sorts of competitive crops produced by the magic of irri-
gation.

Separated by thousands of miles from our great centers of popu-
lation, our thought should ever be to produce for shipment those
erops which bring a high price per pound, thus rendering a high
freight rate relatively low as compared to the selling value of the
product. It is the following out of this principle which enables
California to profitably market in the East over 50,000 carloads of
choice fruits, nuts, wines, and other products.

Practically all of these California products are produced more
eheaply with low-priced labor on, the shores of the Mediterranean
than they are in California, and the water freight rate from Mediter-
ranean ports to New York are about one-tenth of the rail rate from
California on the same products. But so long as present cus-
toms tariffs remain in force, California will continue to reap a golden
harvest from the sale of her high-priced products.

The Pacific coast is raising millions of bushels of grain for con-
sumption in China and Japan, but since the termination of the Russo-
Japanese war great areas of wheat are being sown in Manchuria and
Korea, the most modern flour mills are being installed, and that

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 39

country, with a fertile area almost as great as the total area of all
the Pacific coast States and Idaho and Wyoming, will soon supplant
our Oriental market for grain.

ALFALFA AND SUGAR BEETS.

There’s not a person familiar with irrigation in the inter-mountain
States, who is so ignorant of conditions as to deny the fact that
should we eliminate alfalfa and sugar beets from our equation we
would cut out the very heart of our agriculture, ruining not only
our present prosperity, but all chances for the rapid development of
arid America. As yet there is nothing to take the place of these two
crops and afford us a farm product which we can dispose of in vast
quantities and thereby secure from other territory the money to ex-
change for their products which we require but do not produce. We
can live among ourselves, but unless we can produce something which
other portions of the world require and can find a market for it, we
can not prosper and develop. Why is it that the prevailing crop
throughout the mountain area of arid America is alfalfa, a crop
which is ordinarily worth about $5 per ton, or 25 cents per hundred ?
-Tt is a rare thing for us to put a bale of alfalfa on a freight car. We
can’t ship out a crop worth but 25 cents per hundred. Fortunately,
however, we can feed it to stock, and the stock is worth 4 to 7 cents
per pound in Kansas City and Chicago. Alfalfa as a direct ship-
ping product would be a flat failure in arid America, but when, by
feeding it, we secure a resultant value 2,000 per cent in excess of
it, it becomes our principal crop, and brings us from the outside world
the money necessary to purchase those articles we need but do not
produce.

In contemplating any great expansion of the stock industry in
arid America it would be wise to consider the fact that millions of
American farmers throughout all the States of the Union are rais-
ing stock, and that they already produce all the meat products the
American people consume, and in addition an annual surplus valued
at nearly $200,000,000, which has to be exported and marketed in
competition with the stock from South America, Australia, and
Canada.

AN IDEAL CROP.

It then follows that if we are to develop arid America at a rapid
pace and cause little or no injury to any other portion of agricultural
America, we must have some other crop in addition to those already
discussed. We should have,

First, a crop which is adapted to practically all portions of arid
America.

Second, a profitable crop for the farmer to raise.

Third, if possible, a crop which reaches a higher state of perfection
in arid America than elsewhere in the United States.

Fourth, a crop which can be produced more cheaply in arid America
than in other portions of the United States.

Fifth, a crop for which there is an extensive and a growing market.

Sixth, a crop which commands a high price per pound.

Seventh, a crop which will rotate well with alfalfa and the cereals
and not deplete the productiveness of our soil.

40) THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Eighth, a crop the cultivation of which will increase the acreage
value of our irrigated farms.

All of these conditions are fully met in the one product—sugar.

Let us take these points up seriatum.

First. At an expense of over $40,000,000, 38 beet-sugar factories
have been located in the States of California, Oregon, WwW ashington,
Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and the Territory of
Arizona, leaving only Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, and the arid
portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and the Dakotas without
factories, and in all these States they have been grown with success
experimentally, and the crop will thrive there as well as in the States
which have factories.

Second. This year the farmers of these States will receive $20,000,-
000 for their crop of sugar beets, from which will be produced 400, 000
tons of refined oranulated sugar, the gross returns to the farmers
running from $60 to $125 per acre, with an aver age expense of pro-
duction of $35 to $40 per acre. The net profits in scientific sugar-
beet culture exceed the gross returns from any other crop our farmers
can raise for shipment in large quantities.

Third. Owing to our vast amount of sunshine, our cool nights and
hot days, beets grown in arid America are richer in sugar and higher
in purity than those grown elsewhere in the United States or in
Europe.

Fourth. Owing to our absolute control of moisture conditions and
the richness of our soil we produce a greater tonnage of beets per acre
than is produced elsewhere in the United States, and consequently

can produce them at a less cost per ton.

Fifth. In addition to consuming all the sugar produced from
American-grown beets and from the cane of Louisiana, Texas, Porto
Rico, and Hawaii, the people of the United States last year consumed
1,840,466 tons of imported sugar, for which in its raw state they paid
foreigners over $97,000,000, and this imported sugar, after adding
freight, insurance, import duty, and cost of refining, cost the con-
sumers over $193 ,000,000.

Seventh. Alfalfa is an ideal crop to rotate with sugar beets, and
there is no crop known to agricultural science which has such a won-
derful effect on the productivity of the soil as sugar beets when ro-
tated with cereal crops. I have the record of 35 German farms of
500 to 1,000 acres each for twenty years prior to the advent of sugar-
beet culture and for twenty years subsequent to the advent of sugar-
beet culture, when one-fifth of the total acreage was planted to
sugar beets. In all cases the remaining four- fifths of the acre age
produced more of all other crops than did the entire five-fifths prior
to the introduction of sugar beets, the average gain of all the farms
for all the crops being 48.9 per cent on four- fifths of the acreage.

Eighth. Accor ding to the Department of Agriculture, the average
increase in value of all the farm lands in the United States from
1900 to 1905 was $7.31 per acre. This is but one-sixth the increase
in value of all western beet-sugar lands during the same period, as
is shown by the following extr act from a letter, written to me by the
honorable Secretary of Agriculture, February 16, 1906:

In the United States beet culture has occasioned a large increase in the value
of farms devoted to that crop. Recent returns received by the Department as
to the value of farm lands in 1905, as compared to their value in 1900, show an

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 41

increase in the five years mentioned in the sugar farms of the North Central
States of $11.89 per acre, and in the sugar farms of the Western States of no
less than $42.49 per acre. For the entire country the average increase in the
value of sugar farms was "912. 34 per acre, an increase which exceeds that of all
other classes of farms except fruit farms.

The fact is that the increase in value of western sugar farms from
1900 to 1905 exceeded the total average acreage value of farms and
farm improvements in every State in the Union, except six in 1900,
according to the census returns.

It will thus be seen that sugar beets fill every requirement men-
tioned for the development of. “arid Americ a, and I defy anyone to
name any other crop or any dozen crops which will fill them.

Of our sixty-six American beet-sugar factories, thirty-eight, or
60 per cent, are located in arid America and on the Pacific Coast.
The Department of Agriculture estimates the present crop of Ameri-
can beet sugar at 518,000 tons, and that 400,000 tons of it will be pro-
duced west of the Mississippi River. Based on the present output
per factory, it would require 230 additional factories to produce the
sugar we now import from foreign countries. Arid America now
produces four-fifths of the entire American beet-sugar crop, while
the Eastern States produce the remaining one- -fifth. Should this
ratio continue until importations cease, it would mean the construc-
tion of a million-dollar sugar factory 1 in each of 184 of our irri igated
sections. It would mean the annual consumption of 73,000 tons of
beets by each factory, for which the local farmers te annually
receive some $350,000. It would mean that the cash value of the
25,000 acres of rotated sugar-beet land surrounding each factory
would in five years be enhanced by over a million dollars, thus adding
nearly $200,000,000 to the value of the farms of arid America. It
would mean that the farmers of this arid country would
annually receive $65,000,000 from the sale of this single crop. It
would mean that the East would pour out to our farmers, our labor-
ers, our mechanics, our coal mines, our lime kilns, and our railroads
the enormous sum of $135,000,000 annually. And it would mean that
practically all of this vast amount would be expended by us in the
East in the purchase of machinery, implements, clothing, and the
thousand-and-one other necessaries and luxuries we require, but do
not produce.

TROPICAL TRADE BALANCES.

To-day our eastern people draw their sugar supply from the
Tropics, largely from Cuba, Java, Santo Domingo, etc. Those coun-
tries sell us their sugar and instead of spending the money with us,
spend it in Europe. “Last year we paid Cuba, Santo Domingo, Java,
and Brazil $204,000,000 for their products and they purchased but
$51,000,000 worth of our products, spending the remaining $153,000-
000 they got from us in Europe. Inasmuch as we are perfectly able
to produce our sugar at home it would seem as though it were about
time that such trade relations should cease. If the eastern people
will aid us to produce a fair proportion of the sugar they now
import, we will not be compelled to raise great quantities of com-
petitive crops, and the benefits accruing to the East will be as great
as those accruing to us, for the Eastern States will then get ‘back
in trade as many dollars as they now bury in the Tropics for sugar.

42 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Under present conditions, the material development of arid America
is as dependent upon the culture of sugar beets as is the prosperity
of New England upon its manufacturing industries, the South upon
its cotton crop, the Northwest upon its wheat crop, and the Central
Mississippi Valley upon its corn crop. Deprive any of these sections
of the industries mentioned and twenty years hence they would not
have been bhighted more than arid America would be if robbed of its
sugar-beet crop, unless we secure heretofore unheard-of rates of
transportation.

SUGAR BEETS IN HUMID REGIONS.

I have endeavored to show you the extreme importance, yes, the
absolute necessity of sugar-beet culture in arid America if we are to
develop this country with any degree of rapidity. And while this
industry is to us a necessity, owing to our geographical position, it
is also an industry of the greatest importance in humid regions. So
carefully have the nations of Europe nurtured it that they have in
operation over 1,500 factories, and with the sole exceptions of Switzer-
land, Portugal, and Greece, each and every nation of Continental
Europe produces from beets all or more sugar than its people con-
sume, and between them they annually export several million tons,
and now both Switzerland and Greece have established beet sugar
factories, Portugal being the sole remaining country where the eco-
nomic value of the ‘industry is not yet recognized. Experience in
those countries and in the United States teaches us that of all great
agricultural industries in the world, the sugar-beet industry stands
at the head in making good farmers out of shiftless or “ sagebrush
farmers,” as we call them out here.

The fact is that no farmer can farm indifferently and make money
out of the culture of sugar beets. If he is shiftless, he must mend
his ways or he will lose money on his sugar-beet crop, and when he
mends his ways on that crop and notes the wonderful financial results
which follow, he mends his ways in tilling the balance of his farm
and thereby secures results he never before even dreamed of. As an
illustration of this, take the case of Saxony. Prior to the advent
of sugar-beet culture much of the land in that province was only fit
for sheep pasturage, while now it is one of the richest provinces in
the German Empire. The average yield of wheat per acre in the
United States from 1895 to 1904 was 13.4 bushels, while in Germany
from 1892 to 1902 it was 27.6 bushels,or double our yield. Similar

results are obtained in Germany in the production of other crops,
and the superior yield is attributed almost wholly to the direct and
indirect influence of sugar-beet culture. This is one of the principal
reasons why practically every statesman and political economist in
Europe does everything in his power to foster and spread the culture
of sugar beets, and w hy each and every nation of Continental Kurope,
except France, levies the same import duty on its colonial cane sugars
as upon foreign sugars. (France simply gives off the cost of the
freight. )

Sugar- beet culture virtually makes 2 acres out of one. The roots
of cereals and other crops usually penetrate the soil and draw their
nutriment solely from the 6 or 7 inches which is stirred by the plow.
The sugar beet is a deep rooter and when we prepare the soil for this

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 43

crop we subsoil to a depth of 12 to 14 inches in order that the multi-
tude of fibrous roots which nourish the beet root proper may readily
find their way down. When the beet is pulled these fibrous roots are
broken off and decay, thus carrying down humus. When the ae
ing crops are put in their roots, instead of reaching down but 6 or 7

inches, follow the multitude of interstices left by the beet er rop, aad
thus are nourished by 12 to 14 inches of soil instead of 6 to 7 inches.

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUGAR BEET.

It is an undisputed fact that the sugar beet is the most scientifically
bred vegetable in the world. A century ago the discovery was made
in Germany that a certain variety of beets contained from 5 to 6 per
cent of sugar, and these beets weighed but 4 to 5 ounces. To-day
the average-sized factory beet weighs over 2 pounds, carries 15 to
20 per cent of sugar, and we are able to extract an av erage of about
12 per cent of the weight of the beet, or say 5 ounces of sugar per
beet. In other words, to-day we extract as much pure sugar from
each beet as the entire beet weighed a century ago.

But if Europe gave to the world the sugar beet grown under rain
conditions, arid America gave us the irrigated sugar beet, which is
richer in sugar and yields | more tons per acre. In "1891 a beet sugar
factory was erected in a region of California, where crops are raised
both with and without irrigation. The farmers who put in beets
were instructed by the factory officials to grow them without irriga-
tion, as it was believed that an irrigated beet would be large, but
deficient in sugar content and purity. Learning that some of the
farmers were disregarding these instructions, the factory officials
issued a printed notice stating that they would refuse to receive beets
which had been irrigated. Nevertheless, some of the farmers con-
tinued (sub rosa) to irrigate their beets and secured a greatly in-
creased tonnage of the highest grade product. The facts finally
leaked out, and as a result of this accident and the location of a fac-
tory in Utah the same year, arid America will be richer this year by
the $40,000,000 it will receive for its 1906 sugar crop. The American
people are never willing to take it for granted that Europe has
reached the limit of perfection in anything. We have demonstrated
the superiority of the irrigated beet, and it would seem that the final
touches in scientific sugar beet production were to be solved by
American brains and the climate and soil of arid America. Begin-
ning at the apex reached by Europe, we have brought over their
best sugar-beet seed and our Government is propagating it in arid
America. We have already produced from this American-grown
seed a limited quantity of beets which polarized 25 and 26 per cent
sugar, and in one case 29 per cent of the entire weight of the beet
was sugar. As at 5 cents per pound every additional 1 per cent of
sugar extracted from a ton of beets is worth a dollar, the importance
of this work can be readily understood.

After meeting with almost unanimous discouragement from the
various sugar men I consulted for several years, I had the honor a
few years ago of directing the attention of our Department of Agri-
culture to the possibility of a scientific development in this industry
which, if successful, would all but revolutionize it. The honorable
Secretary of Agriculture and his scientific lieutenants immediately

44 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

agreed with my conclusions both as to the value and the possibility
of success and started the work at once. For three years they have
been carrying on the work and success appears to be assured. This
work is the breeding by selection and pollination of a single-germ
beet ball. At present the ball of woody fibrous matter which en-
velops the beet seed incases from one to six separate and distinct
seeds, each one of which produces a beetlet. These beetlets coming
up together and intertwining necessitate the thinning on hands and
knees, as but one beet can be properly grown ina place. Plant but
one beet ball in a place and the average number of beetlets which ger-
minate from that ball is three and one-half, and all but one must be
pulled up by hand. The number of single-germ beet balls in com-
mercial seed is but a minute fraction of 1 per cent, but in three years’
scientific work the Department of Agriculture has succeeded in bring-
ing it up to 50 per cent, and it is expected that in from six to eight
years more we will have a sugar-beet seed in which this single-germ
characteristic will be fixed.

Success in this undertaking means that the farmer will drill in
his beet seed, say, an inch apart, each seed sending up but one beetlet-
Instead of thinning on hands and knees just at the opportune time,
in order to do as little damage as possible to the remaining beetlets,
he will at his leisure cut out the superfluous beetlets with a hoe,
leaving a thrifty one every six or eight inches, and this remaining
one, instead of being injured by the hoeing, will receive a positive
benefit. This will mean a saving of about six dollars per acre. It
will mea’n the elimination of a laborious class of work which the aver-
age farmer dislikes to perform. It will mean that the farmer who
to-day can raise but a few acres of beets, owing to the fact that he
is limited by the available labor supply to thin his beets promptly at
the opportune time, will be able to quadruple his plantings. It will
mean that he will secure double the tonnage per acre, as the Noeing
out of the superfluous beetlets will not injure the remaining ones, all
of which are considerations of the most far-reaching nature in the
production of this ¢ ne

It is not now possible to produce sugar from beets as cheaply as
it is from cane, and, owing to the cheap peon labor which is to be
had in tropical sugar estates, perhaps never will be. But these seed
developments should greatly reduce the cost of production, and
whether they do or not, the indirect advantages of sugar-beet culture
are so great that they have convinced the political economists and
statesmen of all temperate zone countries that their people can well
_ afford to pay double the price for sugar, rather than to sacrifice an
industry which is so far-reaching in its economic effects.

STARTLING ECONOMIC FACTS.

The sugar bills of the American people amount to over a million
dollars a day for every working day in the year. Last year we paid
to foreigners for sugar more money than we received for all our ex-
ports of wheat and wheat flour, corn and corn meal, and all our ex-
ports of breadstuffs put together, except barley. The sugar we im-
ported last year could have been produced from one and one-half
million acres of American soil, yet it took the entire cereal product
from eight and one-half million acres of American farms to pay for

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 45.

it. Eighty-five per cent of all the money we sent abroad for the pur-
chase of foodstuffs which we are capable of producing at home is
expended for sugar.

THE AMERICAN SUGAR INDUSTRY—ITS PRESENT DEVELOPMENT AND
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES.

{Address before the seventeenth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Con-
gress, held at Kansas City, Mo., November 20-25, 1906. |

There are few, indeed, who realize the importance which home
sugar production has upon the domestic economy of the nations of the
world, and upon the development and prosperity of this great trans-
Mississippi territory. *

The use of the cereal crops as articles of diet antedates the Chris-
tian era by thousands of years, but one of the earliest mentions of
even raw sugar was in‘ the thirteenth century, at which time it
sold at 43 cents per pound. The art of refining was not discovered
until the fourteenth century, and it was not until the beginning of
the seventeenth century that Queen Elizabeth became its patron
saint by first introducing its use as an article of diet. One hundred
and fifty years later, Margeraf discovered that sugar could be pro-
duced from beets, and in 1801 the first beet-sugar factory was erected.

In 1840 the world used about one million tons of sugar, less than 5
per cent of which was derived from beets. In 1890 the world’s sugar
consumption had increased to six million tons, only to be doubled
last year, when the crop exceeded twelve million tons, over seven
millions of which were produced from sugar beets.

Last year the people of the world expended a billion and a quarter
dollars for the purchase of this newly found article of diet, or nearly
twelve times the total value of all our exports of breadstuffs to all
the nations of the world. The growth of no other newly found arti-
cle of diet begins to compare with that of sugar, and none can pre-
dict what figures its future consumption will reach, but if the per
capita consumption of the world were as great as that of the United
States it would require over fifty million tons to supply it, and the
annual sugar bill of the world would be over six billion dollars.

IMPORTANCE OF HOME PRODUCTION.

Owing to the important bearing of home sugar production on the
domestic economy of a nation, the statesmen and political economists
of Europe have so legislated that over $600,000,000 have beeninvested
in 1,500 beet-sugar factories, and in all Continental Europe there are
but three nations, and these of the smallest, which do not produce
all or more sugar than they consume, while between them they export
several million tons.

The 1905 sugar bill of the American people amounted to over
$328,000,000, or more than $1,000,000 for each working day of the
year. In the United States proper and in our insular possessions
we produced a large proportion of this sugar, but in addition to the
home production we expended over $97,000,000 in foreign countries
for the purchase of this single product. It took the product from

46 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

over 8,500,000 acres of American wheat, corn, and oats to settle our
foreign sugar bills for 1905.

Our 1905 importations of sugar were equal to the value of
121,000,000 bushels of wheat at 80 cents per bushel, and this
121,000,000 bushels of wheat rob our soil of over $20,000,000 worth of
fertilizing elements, while the sugar we import does not come from
the soil, but is merely the rain, the wind, and the sunshine which
sweeps over foreign fields, and in no possible manner can it replenish
our soil one iota.

EXPAND AN EXISTING INDUSTRY.

To produce at home all the sugar we consume does not mean that
we must establish a new industry, but merely expand an existing in-
dustry, the huge importance of which is not generally comprehended.

In the beet-sugar industry and the cane-sugar industry of Louisiana,
Texas, Porto Rico, and Hawaii there is invested over $528,000,000.
Compare this investment with the money invested in other American
industries.

The 1900 census report groups all manufacturing industries under
347 classifications or heads. There are but 72 in which the capital
invested exceeds 5 per cent of the amount invested in the American
sugar industry, but 41 in which it exceeds 10 per cent, but 15 in which
it exceeds 25 per cent, but seven in which it exceeds 50 per cent, and
but four in which it exceeds the amount invested in the American
sugar industry. The $6,500,000 invested in our 57 tin-plate mills
is but a fraction over 1 per cent of what we have invested in sugar
plants. Our investment in the sugar industry is eighteen times what
it is in all our cordage and twine plants, sixteen times what it is
in all our distilleries, eight times what it is in glass factories, nearly
seven times what it is in shipbuilding plants, six times what it is in
silk mills, four and one-half times what it is in our 8,000 furniture
factories, three times what it is in our agricultural implement fac-
tories, and nearly three times what it is in all of our 1,100 great
slaughtering and meat-packing plants.

ANNUAL OUTPUT.

Then compare the value of the annual output: Of the entire census
list of 317 groups there are but 76 the value of the output of which
exceeded 10 per cent of the wholesale value of the product of the
American sugar factories of 1905, only 40 groups where it exceeded
25 per cent, but 19 where it exceeded 50 per cent, and but 8 where it
was in excess of the value of the sugar output. Last year the value
of the product of our sugar mills was three times as great as that of
all our distilleries in 1900, twice as much as that of all our bakeries,
$91,000,000 more than that of all our breweries, more than half as
much as that of all our flour and grist mills, and 40 per cent of as
much as the value of all our slaughtering and meat-packing plants.

Next, compare the value of our sugar imports with the value of our
exports of manufactured products. The value of our exports of cot-
ton manufactures and silk manufactures and wool manufactures com-
bined would liquidate our foreign sugar bill for only six months; of
pig iron, bar iron, billets, blooms, wire, wire rods, iron and steel rails,

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 4]

iron and steel sheets, tin plate and structural iron combined, for only
four months; of sole leather, boots and shoes, harness and saddles,
and all other classes of leather goods for less than five months; of
fresh beef, for three months; of agricultural implements, for two
months.

As compared to the value of our exports of cereals, our imports of
sugar cost us more than twice as much as we received for our exports
of wheat and wheat flour, and within $10,000,000 of as much as we
received for our combined exports of all cereals and flours therefrom.

Comparing the value of our cereal crops with the amount we an-
nually expend for sugar at home and abroad we find that our annual
sugar bill amounts to over 60 per cent of the total farm value of all
the wheat we produce; it exceeds by $50,000,000 the value of all the

oats we produce, and it is six times as great as the value of all the
barley we produce.

GOLD AND SUGAR VALUES.

Comparing our annual sugar bill with the production of gold and
silver, it will be seen that our 1905 sugar bill amounted to four times
the value of all the gold we mined in the United States and Alaska
in 1904, and exceeded by $62,000,000 the value of all the gold which

was mined in all other portions of the world. All the gold which
has been produced in the entire world since the discovery of America
would settle the sugar bills of the American people for only thirty-
four years.

When it comes to our exports, we find that the amount of money
we annually expend for sugar amounts to one-fifth of the total value
of all our exports of every character to every country on the face of
the globe. Transfer our home sugar industry toa ‘foreign country
and ‘all the money we now receive for our combined exports of iron
and steel, breadstuffs, cotton goods, and leather goods will not be
sufficient to settle our foreign obligations for the one item of sugar.

WHAT OUR SUGAR WOULD BUY.

What the American people pay out for sugar every two years
would purchase every farm and farm building in the whole of New
England and leave a surplus of $128,000,000 with which to stock
them. Our sugar bills for three years amount to more than the value
of all the farms and farm buildings in Ohio, and $100,000,000 more
than the value of all the farms and farm buildings in either New
York or Pennsylvania.

T am glad to note the awakening of our honorable and astute Sec-
retary of State to the deplorable “trade conditions existing between
this country and Central and South America, for since we removed
the duty on coffee and rubber we have lost over $350,000,000 of reve-
nue on our importations from Brazil alone, and our adverse trade bal-
ance with that country has amounted to over $1,350,000,000.

The total value of our 1905 exports to the West Indies, Central and
South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania combined, including Cuba,
Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, amounted to several mil-
lion dollars less than what the American people expended the same
year for the one item of sugar. '

48 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.
MUST RETURN TO THE FARM.

On October 7 of this year Mr. James J. Hill, in a notable address,
told the Commercial Association of Chicago:

We can not continue to supply the world and recruit our own resources by
the methods of trade that now obtain, because the minerals stored in the
ground do not recreate themselves. Once utilized they are gone forever. We
shall, with these coming millions to provide for, be thrown back upon the soil,
the only resource of mankind that is capable of infinite renewal and that offers
life for generation after generation. ‘This is the all-important lesson which it
becomes you, as leaders of thought and action, as business men dealing with
a business situation certain to arise in the near future, to impress upon the in-
telligence and the imagination of those who follow your example and look to you
for guidance.

The period of ransacking the national storehouse to see what can be sent
over seas and sold must be changed to an era in which we shall consider the
preservation and the improvement of what is fundamentally our chief main-
tenance. For upon the cultivation of the soil all varied commercial activity, of
whatever intrinsic form or interest is mainly built, and upon it depend ‘the
future of mankind and the nature and stability of its institutions.

In some things we are going backward. ‘The soil of the country is being im-
poverished by careless treatment.

To a realization of our position to a return to agriculture, to a jealous care
of our land resources, both as to quantity and quality, and to a mode of culti-
vation that shall at once multiply per acre and restore instead of destroy pro-
ductive qualities, we must come without delay if we are to escape disaster. I
know of no issue in business or in politics that compares in importance with
this that looms already upon us and threatens our future.

It is easily demonstrable that a mere reform of methods of cultivation would
double the agricultural products each year, adding for the whole country from
five to six billion dollars to the national wealth, while the resort to small farms
and the adoption of intensive cultivation would give an equal additional in-
crement.

THE HUMBLE SUGAR BEET.

If Mr. Hill had mentioned the humble sugar beet as the most im-
portant factor in creating the conditions which he outlined, as being
necessary to our future prosperity, his remarks would have pointed
no more specifically to this crop. Over $150,000,000 have been in-
vested in the sugar industry of the trans-Mississippi territory, and
the lessons they have taught from Minnesota on the east to California
on the west and from Montana and Washington on the north to Ari-
zona on the south all tell the same tale. The necessarily intensive
farming to make the crop a success makes good farmers out of shift-
less farmers; it makes rich farmers out of poor farmers; it makes
prosperous towns and merchants and bankers and professional men
in formerly listless communities; it enhances the value of town prop-
erty, and it doubles and quadruples the value of all farm property.
On February 16 last the honorable Secretary of Agriculture wrote
me as follows:

In the United States beet culture has occasioned a large increase in the value
of farms devoted to that crop. Recent returns received by the Department
as to the value of farm lands in 1905, as compared to their value in 1900, show
an increase in the five years mentioned in the sugar farms of the North Cen-
tral States of $11.S9 per acre, and in the sugar farms of the Western States no
less than $42.49 per acre. For the entire country the average increase in the
value of sugar farms was $12.34 per acre, an increase which exceeds that of
all other classes of farms, except fruit farms.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 49
WESTERN SUGAR FARMS.

The fact is that the increase in value of Western sugar farms from
1900 to 1905 exceeded the total average acreage value of farms and
farm improvements in every State in the Union except six in 1900,
according to the census returns.

Take the case of Garden City, Kans. Senator Swink told me last
night that when he went in there three years ago land, including
ditch rights, was selling at $6 to $6.50 an acre; that a year or two
ago the best farms were selling at $12 to $13 an acre, and now that
their new $500,000 beet-sugar plant is in operation these same lands
are worth from $60 an acre up. This factory will consume the
beets grown on 7,000 acres, and with a five-year rotation means that
the values of 35,000 acres of land have been increased $50 per acre,
or a total added farm value of $1,750,000, and the farmers, after
paying $2 to $2.50 per day for field labor are clearing from $30 to
$60 per acre, while the average gross return of American wheat and
corn farmers is less than $12 per acre.

Of course, we are not all farmers. We have a great population in
Kansas City, in St. Louis, in Omaha, in Des Moines, in Minneapolis,
in Denver, in Salt Lake, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland,
Seattle, Tacoma, and hundreds of smaller cities in the trans-Mis-
sissippi territory, which are directly affected by the growth of this
industry, while the cities of the southern trans-Mississippi territory
draw tribute from the cane-sugar industry of Louisiana and Texas.

The sugar-beet farmers of the trans-Mississippi territory will
derive from 20 to 25 million dollars from their present crop of
sugar beets, and practically every dollar of it will drift back through
our commercial centers.

AS A PROMOTER OF POPULATION.

Take the case of Oxnard, Cal. When the American Beet Sugar
Company went in there to erect a $2,500,000 plant there was no
population whatever. To-day it is a flourishing town of 3,500
people.

The beet farmers within a radius of 30 miles of that factory will
receive over $1,000,000 for their present crop of beets, and the ex-
penditures for labor, coke, mill supplies, fuel, ete., will amount to
another million dollars. Is it any wonder that this makes a pros-
perous community, which enriches the larger near-by commercial
centers ?

And as to the effect on the railroads. Last year the Southern
Pacific received over $900,000 from its Oxnard offices, there being
but four points between San Francisco and E] Paso—namely, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Jose—where the traffic
receipts of the road were greater than from this little new beet-
sugar town. 5 bh 24; : mit

As to the arid portion of the trans-Mississippi territory, it 1s ab-
solutely dependent upon alfalfa and beet sugar for its full develop-
ment on account of the necessarily heavy long-haul freight charges
to our large Eastern centers of population.

S. Doc. 580, 60-1——4

50 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.
FREIGHT PERCENTAGES.

Based on present prices the freight on wheat from Utah to Chicago
amounts to 43 per cent of its delivered value, of barley 62 per cent,
of oats 55 per cent, and of apples 60 per cent. Alfalfa and sugar
beets average the farmer about $5 per ton, but the alfalfa is fed to
stock, which brings 5 to 8 cents per pound in Chicago, and the sugar
extracted from the beets is worth 44 to 5} cents and the freight
forms a far smaller percentage of the delivered value of the product.

Of practically every other agricultural crop we produce a sur-
plus, and the home price is regulated by the price in Europe, while
to produce at home the refined sugar we now import in its raw state
would annually put nearly $200,000,000 into the pockets of American
farmers, laborers, and mechanics.

The trans-Mississippi territory is the natural place in which to
erect a large portion of the 300 additional factories necessary to
produce this product, and the question to-day is as to whether we
shall build up 300 new and prosperous valleys in this western country
or shall we allow our heritage to slip away from us and be turned into
the hands of a few would-be exploiters of the Philippine Islands?

AN ECONOMIC QUESTION.

Both political parties are divided on this subject, which is an eco-
nomic and not a political one. In the Senate Committee on the Phil-
ippines 60 per cent of the Democrats and 624 per cent of the Repub-
licans voted against the pending Philippine bill and to maintain our
home industry. A perusal of the printed testimony will show you
that this majority in each party felt that neither we nor the native
Filipinos had anything to gain, but everything to lose, by sacrificing
this great and growing industry in order to enrich a handful of
American, British, and Chinese carpetbag exploiters.

They’ pointed out that we had already spent over $500,000,000
on the Philippines and were continuing to spend over $25,000,000 a
year on those islands, with no hope of getting any portion of it back.
Senator Hale, of Maine, developed the fact that while the Philip-
pines purchased enormous quantities of goods from foreign countries
their purchases from us amounted in value to less than was paid to
the farmers of one county in his State for their potato crop, and he
caused the Secretary of War to admit that whatever changes might
be made in our tariff relations with those islands there was no pros-
pect of greatly increasing the sale of our goods, as the goods they
import can be purchased in other markets for less money than it
costs us to produce them.

PHILIPPINE TARIFF.

It was shown that while we collect 75 per cent of the regular tariff
on Philippine products, every dollar of this money is remitted to the
Philippine government, instead of being covered into our Treasury,
while we pay full duty on every article we send to the islands and
allow them to issue a 50-cent dollar with which to pay their laborers,
and thus cut the already phenomenally low wage rate in half. It —
was shown that largely owing to this wage rate of 17 cents per day

.THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 51

the average cost of sugar production in those islands is but 74 cents
per 100 pounds, while our farmers average to receive $2.21 per 100
for the sugar in their beets before ever the factory touches them, or
just three times as much as the total cost of production in the Phil-
ippine Islands.

It was shown that the freight rate from Manila to New York is
24 cents per 100 pounds, or 1 cent per 100 less than the freight rate
on the same commodity from Omaha to Chicago, 11 cents less than
from Denver to Chicago, and 31 cents less than from Utah to
Chicago.

Even the Cabinet is split up on this important question, and the
President has so far failed to wield the proverbial “ big stick” in
either direction.

The Secretary of Agriculture stands firmly by the home sugar in-
dustry, which in nine years he has been instrumental in building
up from 40,000 to nearly 400,000 tons, thereby enriching our farm-
ers to the extent of some $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 annually.

On the other hand, the Secretary of War seems utterly indifferent
to the interests of the American farmer and laborer, and pooh-
poohs the question as to the islands causing us any possible injury
under any conditions. Some public men are like Congressman Lacey,
of Iowa, who announced himself as a standpatter of Standpatters-
ville, and was a standpatter on all except sugar and tobacco.

A MIX-UP WITH BOTH PARTIES.

The fact of the matter is, it is a sort of mix-up with both parties.
In both there seems to be a growing sentiment that we should get
rid of this national vermiform appendix, which performs no func-
tion, is becoming painful, may become serious, and ought to be cut
out. Members of both parties see that the sure way to cement the
islands to us for all time is to divert a few hundred millions from
the home sugar industry to that of the Philippines, by fostering
their sugar industry at the expense of ours. They have also dis-
covered that, with the sole exception of a slight discount made by
France, no European country makes any reduction on the sugar
coming from its colonies; that last year Holland, which owns the
island of Java, which produces 1,000,000 tons of sugar a year, took
but 12 tons out of that million; that each pound of it paid full tariff
duty, and that the mother country not only supplied its own people
with all the sugar they consumed, but exported 500,000,000 pounds
to other nations.

The best teacher in the world is experience, and the best way to
judge a thing is by comparison.

Some years ago we entered into a reciprocity treaty with Hawaii,
which then produced 9,000 tons of sugar annually.

At that time the very maximum capacity of those islands was
placed at 11,000 tons and our maximum possible loss of revenue was
placed at $400,000 annually.

What was the result of that treaty? In thirty years the Hawaiian
sugar production has jumped to 370,000 tons, all of which comes
here. Our loss of revenue has averaged $5,000,000 annually, and
is now over $13,000,000 per annum. In thirty years we sold them
a total of $129,000,000 worth of goods and made them a cash present

52 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

of $153.000.000 in revenue; or, in other words, made them a present
of $1.19 for every dollar’s worth of goods they purchased of us.
Now, if the sugar production of Hawaii increased 3,400 per cent
in thirty years, what could be expected of the Philippine product if
granted like concessions ?
Let us compare the conditions of the two groups of islands.

PHILIPPINE POSSIBILITIES.

The total area of the Philippines is eighteen times as great as that
of Hawaii, while the estimated arable area is twenty-one times as
great.

The native population of Hawai, from which to draw the labor
supply, was between 40,000 and 50,000, while the native population
of the Philippines is 7,500,000, or one hundred and fifty times as
great.

The sugar lands of the Philippines produce more sugar per acre
than did the Hawaiian sugar lands when operated in like manner.

The freight rate from Hawaii to New York is 274 cents per 100,
and it is but 24 cents from Manila to New York.

The average wage rate for sugar-plantation labor is $19.76 per
month in Hawaii and in the Philippines it is but $4.28 per month.

If, with all their superior advantages, the Philippines would in-
crease their sugar output no faster than has Hawaun, it still would
amount to over 4,000,000 tons in thirty years, and the islands have a
capacity for producing over 8,000,000 tons annually, while the total
American consumption is less than 3,000,000 tons.

With these facts before you it should not be difficult to determine
whether our Moses in the Cabinet hails from Tama County, Iowa, or
from Cincinnati, Ohio.

THE SUGAR BEET INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

[Address before the fifteenth annual session of the National Irrigation Congress, held
at Sacramento, Cal., September 2-6, 1907.]

To comprehend fully the vital effect which the production of beet
sugar is having, and which it is hoped it will continue to have upon
the development of arid America by means of irrigation, it 1s neces-
sary first to review briefly the sugar situation of the world.

Sugar is at once one of the most recently acquired, the most rapidly
increasing, and one of the most important articles of human diet in
the world. From its earliest mention until the time of Queen Eliza-
beth sugar was used only in the arts and sciences and sold at approxi-
mately $1 per pound. Until the beginning of the last century the
world’s crop of sugar was derived wholly from the cane of the Trop-
ics. The four decades following the issuance of a decree by the first
Napoleon appropriating 1,000,000 francs for experimental work in
connection with the development of the sugar beet were only impor-
tant in increasing the quality of the beets, for, in 1840, 95 per cent of
the world’s sugar crop of about 1,000,000 tons was still derived from
the cane of the Tropics. Since 1840 the increase in production and
consumption of sugar has amounted to 150 per cent per decade, and
now amounts to 12,000,000 tons (60 per cent of which is produced

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 53

from beets), for which the people of the world annually expend over
$1,250,000,000.

In the early development of the sugar beet it was thought that it
would only thrive in certain restricted districts in France and Ger-
many. To-day there are over 1,500 beet sugar factories scattered over
all but two of the European nations, and they produce one-half of
the world’s commercial sugar crop.

This string of factories, extending from Russia on the north, to the
very shores of the Mediterranean on the south, not only supphes the
350,000,000 Europeans with all the sugar they consume, but provides
an annual surplus of several million tons which are exported to Great
Britain and other countries.

In 1864 the people of the United States consumed but 18 pounds
of sugar per capita. Last year our per capita consumption was 76
pounds as compared to 90 pounds in Great Britain, and 7 pounds
in Italy.

What proportions the future sugar crop of the world will reach
is problematical, but if the average per capita consumption of the
world were as great to-day as it is in Great Britain an annual crop
of 70,000,000 tons would be required and at 5 cents per pound would
mean an expenditure of $7,000,000,000 for this newly found article
of diet.

It should not be presumed that Europe has so greatly extended
her beet-sugar industry because it can produce sugar at home for
less money per pound than it can be purchased for in the Tropics.
Such is not the case. Europe long since learned the lesson that even
with her so-called “ pauper labor ” cultivating the most scientifically
bred vegetable in the world it was impossible successfully to compete
with the peon labor of the Tropics, who, from one planting of an
almost indigenous weed, reap from seven to fifteen annual crops.
In Europe it is recognized that the cost to the consumer of a pound
of sugar is of minor consideration as compared to the vast economic
advantages to be secured by producing their sugar at home. This
is exemplified by the fact that all European nations levy protecting
duties on sugar importations, and while most of the sugar-producing
tropical islands of the world are colonies of European nations not
one of those nations, with the sole exception of France, makes the
slightest tariff concession on sugar from its colonial possessions.
The slight tariff concession which France grants to colonial sugars
is an amount equal to the freight charges on the product from the
colony to the mother country.

Little Holland owns the island of Java, which produces 1,000,000
tons of sugar annually, it being, next to Cuba, the largest sugar-pro-
ducing island in the world.

Holland purchases practically no Java sugar, and the few tons
which do come to the mother country are subjected to full duty.
Holland, on the other hand, produces from beets all the sugar its
people consume, besides exporting vast quantities to other countries.
The sturdy Dutchman may love the native Javanese, Holland’s
“ Tittle Brown Brother,” but his home farmer, his own blood and
brawn, is closer to his heart than the wily Oriental can ever expect
to get.

Tf our national legislators are looking for a universal precedent
on which to construct a fiscal policy for our newly acquired colonies,

54 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

they can easily find it, for even Great Britain, which, for revenue
purposes, levies a duty of approximately 1 cent per pound on sugar
importations, collects full duty on its importations of colonial sugar.

EFFECTS OF SUGAR-BEET CULTURE IN EUROPE.

The reason for the adoption of this economic policy by the nations
of continental Europe are apparent to those who have studied the
situation.

In the first place the expansion of the home industry has offered the
profitable investment of more than $500,000.000.

Second. It distributes among the people of Europe some $400,000,-
000 annually, which would otherwise be sent to the Tropics for sugar.

Third. They annually draw from the other countries of the world
from $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 for the surplus sugar they produce
and export.

Fourth. They have found that the use of the sugar beet to rotate
with other crops has reclaimed vast areas of hitherto practically
worthless land.

Fifth. They find that sugar-beet culture makes good farmers out
of shiftless farmers. _

Sixth. They find, in Germany at least, that the use of the sugar
beet as a rotating crop increases the acreage production of the wheat
24 per cent, of barley 25 per cent, of rye 15 per cent, of peas 86 per
cent, and of potatoes 102 per cent.

There are several reasons for this, but the two main causes are that
to produce successfully sugar beets the soil must not only be put in
fine tilth but must be cultivated during a large portion of the grow-
ing period, and this thorough cultivation has nearly as much effect
on the following crop as it has on the beet crop. ‘The second -main
reason is that as a rule the roots of crops reach only as deep as the
land is plowed, the soil underneath being hard and almost impene-
trable by tender roots. For other crops you plow but 6 to 7 inches
deep and the roots of your crops draw nutriment from that depth
only.

For sugar beets you subsoil to a depth of 12 to 14 inches, and the
small fibrous roots of the beet reach an even greater depth. When
your beets are pulled, these little fibrous roots are broken off in the
ground and through decay not only add humus to the lower stratum
of soil, but leave innumerable minute veins or holes to the very
bottom of the subsoiling.

When your grain or other crop is put in the next year, instead of
the roots drawing nutriment from only 6 or 7 inches of soil, they
follow the little holes left by the fibrous beet roots and the result is
that in effect you have doubled your soil without buying or cultivat-
ing more acres, and hence have greatly increased your crop, be it
wheat or barley or beans or potatoes.

Like conditions prevail in the United States, and in arid America
there are still more potent reasons for expanding this industry, which
is so far-reaching in its economic effects.

“Arid America has and always will have one tremendous economic
handicap—it is located a long distance from our great centers of
population, and owing to the necessary long-haul freight charges, we
can never expect to ship out low-priced products. Wheat, oats, bar-

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 55

ley, rye, alfalfa and scores of other crops we produce to perfection
but can never hope to transport and market as cheaply as they can be
produced in and marketed from the great Mississippi Valley. Throw
a bale of alfalfa into a freight car and before it reaches the confines
of the county in which it was raised, the freight charges amount to
more than the value of the alfalfa. But take that alfalfa, worth, say,
$5 per ton, and feed it to stock, and you turn it into a product which
is worth from $100 to $150 a ton in Kansas City or Chicago, or San
Francisco, and hence will stand shipment. That is why alfalfa is
to-day the most important crop grown in arid America.

The same conditions apply to sugar beets, which are delivered to
the neighboring beet-sugar factory and there turned into granulated
sugar which is worth $90 to $110 per ton laid down in Chicago.

Of nearly every agricultural crop, arid America can produce in
abundance all that her people will ever consume, but when it comes
to the production of crops which can be shipped out at a profit and
exchanged for the innumerable articles which its people must have
but do not produce, alfalfa and sugar beets are of more value than
are all other agricultural crops combined—in fact, on the produc-
tion of these two crops depends the full development of this desert
domain.

PROGRESS OF THE AMERICAN BEET-SUGAR INDUSTRY.

And how are we in America progressing in the production of beet
sugar? In 1888, the production of beet sugar in the United States
reached 1,000 tons for the first time in our history. When the present
tariff bill was enacted ten years ago, we had but six beet-sugar fac-
tories in the United States and produced only 40,000 tons of beet
sugar. Last year we had sixty-three factories in operation and pro-
duced 483,612 tons of sugar, surpassing for the first time the cane-
sugar output of Louisiana and Texas, thus transferring the “ Sugar
Bowl of the United States ” from the South to the West.

Last year American farmers received over $22,000,000 for their
sugar-beet crop and the industry yielded-nearly as much more to the
laborers and other employees of the factories, the coal mines, the rail-
roads, the lime kilns, and numerous. other classes of American
industry.

Our Department of Agriculture now classes it as the seventh most
important agricultural product of the United States, and yet its de-
velopment here is in its infancy.

AN INDUSTRY OF ARID AMERICA.

While the beet-sugar factories of the United States extend from
the State of New York on the east to the Pacific coast on the west,
and while it is generally considered as being a national industry, it
is the child of arid America, and still is, to all intents and purposes, a
purely arid American industry.

The development of the American beet-sugar industry has been
confined largely to arid America for the reason that I have men-
tioned—freight. In our eastern States the conditions for the pro-
duction of beet sugar are perhaps as favorable as they are here, but
here the industry is a necessity, while there it is not. The eastern.

56 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

farmer has at his door a profitable market for whatever surplus crop
he produces.

The industry has been established in sixteen American States and
Territories. twelve of which are wholly or in part in arid America,
and there are but four States and Territories in arid America in
which it has not been established.

Of the sixty-three American beet-sugar factories, thirty-nine, or
nearly two-thirds of the total number, are located in arid America.

Of the $22,000,000 received last year by American farmers for
their sugar beets, $15,000,000, or 70 per cent, went to the farmers of
arid America and the Pacific coast.

The first suecessful American beet-sugar factory was erected and
is still running at Alameda, less than 100 miles from where we are
now assembled, and its original builder still resides there.

The largest beet-sugar factory in the world is located in a neigh-
boring county, and the second largest factory in the Union is located
in the southern end of this State.

The first sugar beets in the world to be grown under irrigation
were produced in Utah by our friends, the Mormons, the pioneer irri-
gationists of modern America.

Surely no further proof should be needed in order to establish the
parentage of this promising industry. And now that arid America
has invested $100,000,000 in the rearing and bringing of this lusty
infant to manhood, she should strive steadfastly to see that his career
is fully rounded out by producing at home all the sugar this great
nation consumes and thereby reap a reward which would distance
any real or mythical king’s ransom ever mentioned in history.

EFFECTS OF EXPANDING THE BEET-SUGAR INDUSTRY.

Since Congress decided ten years ago to encourage and foster the
beet-sugar industry we have produced 2,000,000 tons of sugar from
American-grown beets, for which our farmers have received
$90,000,000, while $70,000,000 more has accrued to other forms of
American industry. Had this sugar been imported from the Tropics
and merely refined in this country, American industry would have
profited only to the extent of $6.72 per ton, or a total of less than
$1,350,000. Hence, what we have already done has added the net
sum of $158,000,000 to the returns of American industry.

This 2,000,000 tons, however, has been a mere bagatelle compared
to our importations, which now amount to nearly as much per year
as we have produced from beets in ten years.

While during the past ten years we have been producing this
2,000,000 tons of beet sugar, the revenues collected on our importations
of foreign grown sugar have amounted to the enormous sum of
$529,000,000, or nearly one-third of all the customs revenue we have
collected during this entire period on all other classes of imports
combined.

We have needed the money, and it has gone a long way toward
building our Navy and supporting our various great departments of
government.

During this ten-year period all other classes of food products
have advanced in price from a minimum of 16 per cent for wheat
flour to 46 per cent for pork, or an average of about 30 per cent, while

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 57

similar or greater advances have been made in the price of ‘labor,
coal, machinery, and all other articles produced by American indus-
try.

During the same period the foreign price of raw sugar has ad-
vanced 7 per cent, and the home price of sugar beets 15 per cent.

Considering all these advances which so materially affect the cost
of producing sugar, and considering the fact that more than half a
billion dollars in customs revenue has been collected on sugar in order
to provide national revenue and establish the beet-sugar industry at
home, we have naturally to expect a material rise in the home price of
sugar. But what are the facts?) The New York prices of granulated
sugar have advanced from $4.50 per 100 pounds in 1897 to $4.52 per
100 pounds in 1906, or less than one-half of 1 per cent in ten years.
In addition to this, the retail price of sugar in New York has aver-
aged to be lower than the retail price in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and St.
Petersburg, the commercial centers of the greatest beet-sugar produc-
ing countries in the world. If by fostering this industry of arid
America an unjust burden has been laid upon any citizen of any
State in the Union, the figures do not show it.

The revenues collected have been shared by all the people, Kast and
West; the gain to American industry of $158,000,000 has gone largely
to arid America, and the bulk of it has drifted back to our eastern
manufacturers in payment of goods we require, but do not produce
in arid America.

Had this sugar been purchased from the planters of the Tropics
practically none of the money paid for it would ever have been re-
turned to this country. This is evidenced by our trade balances with
Cuba, Santo Domingo, Brazil, and Java, from which countries we pur-
chase the bulk of our sugar. We annually send these countries $200,-
000,000 in gold in payment for their products, while they return to
us but $50,000,000 and expend the other $150,000,000 in Europe in the
purchase of products which are common to this country.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXPANSION.

The sugar bills of the American people amount to $350,000,000 a
year, or more than $1,000,000 a day for each working day of the year.

In addition to consuming all the sugar produced from the beets of
arid America and the cane of Louisiana, Texas, Hawaii, and Porto
Rico, we are annually importing 1,800,000 tons from foreign tropical
islands.

Our enormous exports of breadstuffs have naturally been pointed
to with pride for many years past, but notwithstanding our large
home sugar industry on the mainland and in our island possessions,
in 1905, “aside from the receipts for our barley exports, it required
more money to settle our foreign raw sugar bills than all we received
for all our exports of breadstuffs and “preparations of breadstuffs,
including corn and corn meal, oats and oat meal, rye and rye flour,
and wheat and wheat flour combined.

It took the value of all the wheat we raised on 8,500,000 acres, or
one-fifth of the entire wheat acreage of the United States, to pay for
the sugar we imported from foreign lands and which we could have
produced on 1,500,000 acres of American sugar beets. As a nation
we would have “ broke even,” as the saying goes, if we had given up

58 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

8,500,000 acres of wheat sowings, planted a million and a half acres
of it to sugar beets and allowed the other 7,000,000 acres to lie fallow
or have turned it into golf links.

To produce this sugar at home would mean the investment of
$300,000,000 to $400,000,000 in the erection of several hundred addi-
tional beet-sugar factories and the consequent building up of a like
number of prosperous communities. ;

EFFECT OF PAST LEGISLATION.

Ten years ago it looked as though we were in a fair way to pro-
duce by this time all the sugar we consume.

During the first five years of this ten-year period capital rushed
headlong into the industry, but the farmers were apathetic, for it was
a new crop. Capitalists increased the number of factories 600 per
cent in five years, while the farmers increased their sowings but 150
per cent. The projectors of new factories were crying for more beets,
and any reasonably good community that offered contracts for from
1,000 to 2,000 acres of beets could secure the erection of a $500,000
or a $1,000,000 factory.

During the second five years of this period the reverse conditions
have prevailed. The farmers have increased their plantings nearly
600 per cent, while the capitalists have increased the number of fac-
tories less than 100 per cent, and to-day scores of excellent locations,
especially in arid America, offering 5,000 to 6,000 acres, signed up
for five and six years, are unable to induce capitalists to give them a
second thought or to invest a dollar. Last year alone our beet-sugar
output increased 50 per cent, and yet there is being erected in the
entire United States but one new plant for the coming campaign.

Five years ago the sugar output per factory averaged but 2,500
tons, while last year it averaged over 7,500 tons.

The apathy concerning the industry has been shifted from the
minds of the farmers to the minds of the capitalists. At first thought
it seems strange that capitalists would pour millions into the industry
when beets were not to be had, while now, with offers of more beets
than they can slice, they refuse to invest. Naturally there must be a
cause for this reversal of conditions. The present zeal of the farmers
to grow beets comes from their having learned that the culture of
sugar beets pays better than that of any other crop.

The apathy of the capitalists was first caused by our annexation of
Hawaii and Porto Rico and the lowering of the duty on Cuban sugar
and thereby admitting free, or at a reduced rate of duty, over
2,000,000 tons of sugar per annum. When the agitation for the free
entry of Cuban sugar began, eighty-six new beet-sugar factories to
cost $50,000,000 were in course of organization. All were immedi-
ately abandoned and but six of them have since been revived. As a
result of such legislation, capital has seen the Hawaiian sugar crop
increase from 9,000 to 400,000 tons, the Porto Rican crop from 35,000
to 220,000 tons, and the Cuban crop from a few hundred thousand to
1,500,000 tons, all of which naturally comes to this country, thereby
reducing the prospective market for a like amount of home-grown
beet sugar.

Nearly $250,000,000 of American money which should have gone
into the home sugar industry has been diverted to the sugar industry

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 59

of those islands by reason of our legislation favoring their sugar
product, for there it can secure cheap labor, while here it can not.
Do you wonder that capital hesitates? If the more than 2,000,000
tons of sugar now annually produced in these islands by means of
American capital were being produced in the United States, Ameri-
can industry would be profiting to the extent of over $170,000,000
annually.

EFFECT OF ANTICIPATED LEGISLATION.

But. it is not past but anticipated legislation which to-day so
securely bars the doors and is preventing capital from embarking in
this industry of arid America.

It can stand what has been done, but it fears the future. It sees
American troops in Cuba, and the efforts which are being made by
the American sugar producers in that island for its annexation and
the free admittance of their sugar to this market, and capital knows
that Cuba is capable of producing 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 tons of
sugar at a less cost than sugar can be produced in the United States
from either beets or cane.

More than all, just as beet-sugar capital had begun to get its “ sec-
ond wind ” after being hit by free tropical sugar from both sides of
the world and was gradually returning to the industry, acute agita-
tion for the free introduction of Philippine sugar gave it a body
blow from which it has not yet recovered. These astute, well-in-
formed men of millions know that the arable area of the Philippines
is five times as great as is the combined area of Cuba, Porto Rico,
and Hawaii, and that the population is four times as great. They
know that while the prevailing wage rate on the sugar-beet farms
of the United States is $40 to $65 per month, on the cane fields of
Porto Rico $13, in Hawaii $20, and in Cuba $20 to $26; in the Philip-
pines it is but $4.29 per month. They know that while we already
produce more sugar than we consume west of the Missouri River,
and must ship our surplus east at a freight rate of 60 cents per 100
from the Pacific coast, 35 cents from Denver, and 25 cents from
Omaha to Chicago, the freight rate on the same commodity from
Tloilo and Manila to New York is but 24 cents per 100 pounds. They
know that even with the crudest methods of cultivation and milling
now prevailing in the Philippines—whereby there is secured a yield
of half a crop of cane, whereby one-half of the juice of this half crop
is lost in extraction and nearly one-half of the remaining juice is
lost in the boiling—the Philippines yet are able to lay down sugar in
the port of New York at a cost far less than the amount.the farmers
of arid America are now receiving for the sugar in their beets before
ever the factory has touched them.

They know that with modern mills and methods in the Philippines
and the free entry of Philippine sugar to our market it would soon
be impossible for the American factories to pay a dollar a ton for
beets, and that our farmers could not produce them at that price.
Starting with but one-eighteenth the area and one one-hundred-and-
sixtieth of the population, they have seen the sugar crop of Hawaii
increase over 4,000 per cent as a result of legislative favors similar
to those which are being demanded for the Philippines, which de-
mands include the free entry of their sugar to our markets, the

60 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

importation of contract coolie Chinese labor, and the raising of the
present acreage limit of corporate sugar estates from 2,500 to 25,000
acres.

For four years past capital has observed our Secretary of War
lobbying for one or the other or all of these bills at every session of
Congress, and is aware of his declarations that until it is secured he
will continue to labor for it at every session of Congress so long as he
is in public office.

These are the unsettled conditions which exist to-day and which
have stopped absolutely the erection of new factories.

Five years ago the expansion of the industry rested largely with
the farmers. The farmers have since come to the front with the beets
and the output of sugar per factory has been increased over 200 per
cent. As a rule the existing factories are to-day being operated to
their limit. They can handle no more beets, while the farmers are
begging for new factories, in the erection of which exists the only
possibility of expanding the industry.

Not until Congress abandons its hesitating, its vacillating policy
and assures capital in so far as it can as to whether it will once and
for all take to its bosom the naked peon half savage of the Orient, or
the intelligent, well-housed farmer of its own flesh and blood, not
until that time can we expect to see new sugar factories plastered
all over arid America, or else see them plastered all over the Philip-
pine Islands.

PHILIPPINE FALLACIES.

Advocates of Philippine tariff reduction state that sugar and
tobacco are the principal productions of the islands, and that our gen-
eral tariff on Philippine products is the prime factor which induces
prosperity or depression throughout the archipelago; concealing the
fact that over 76 per cent of the islands’ total exports are already per-
mitted to enter our ports absolutely free of duty, and that 82 per cent
of Philippine products actually entering our ports pass through our
custom-houses without being subjected to the imposition of any duty
whatsoever.

They represent that by collecting a duty on Philippine products
we are profiting at the expense of our “ wards;” but they fail to state
that on the 16 per cent of Philippine products on which we collect any
duty whatever, we collect but 75 per cent of the regular tariff rates
imposed upon like products coming from other countries, and that the
entire 75 per cent so connected does not go into our Treasury at all,
but is covered into a special fund and remitted to the Philippine gov-
ernment, thereby reducing by that amount the burden of local taxa-
tion imposed upon the Filipino people, while American products
entering the Philippines are subjected to the imposition of their
maximum rates of duty.

And how does this work out? We afford them a market for one-
half of their exports, and as Senator Hale developed when he had
Secretary Taft before the Philippine Committee of the Senate, of
their $30,000,000 worth of annual imports, the value of the portion
which they buy of us amounts to less than the farmers of one county
in Maine annually receive for the one crop of potatoes.

They lead the American people to believe that agriculture through-
out the archipelago is prostrated because Congress fails to eliminate

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 61

the tariff on their sugar and tobacco; but they fail to state that 90
per cent of all the sugar and 80 per cent of all the tobacco grown in
the Philippines is at present produced on two of the 3,141 islands
comprising the group, and hence if the statements of the friends of
Philippine tariff reduction are accepted we must take it for granted
that a futrher tariff reduction on these two products grown on two
islands (and those not the largest in the archipelago) is going to
bestow everlasting peace and prosperity on the people of the other
3,139 islands, which have as much to do with the production of the
sugar and tobacco crop of the Philippines as the people of Maine
have to do with the production of the wheat crop of the United
States.

They tell us that the distress is general, and would be immediately
relieved by the passage of a bill granting free access of their sugar
and tobacco to our markets; but they fail to state that less than
280,000 acres, or only 7.7 per cent of the 3,247,112 acres now under
cultivation in the Philippines, are devoted to sugar and tobacco, and
thus we must stupidly believe that a further concession made on the
products raised on these 280,000 acres will eternally enrich the people
who are raising other crops on some three million other acres.

They tell us that the passage of a bill removing our tariff on their
sugar and tobacco would gain for us the confidence of the entire
Filipino population in our benevolent intentions; but they fail to
state that of the 7,635,000 inhabitants of the Philippine Islands less
than 80,000—or about 1 per cent—are engaged in the production and
manufacture of sugar and tobacco, and so we must further tax our
credulity and blindly believe that the enrichment of a few foreign
and other planters who employ 80,000 peon laborers at an average
wage of $4.29 per month will in some occult manner bring joy and
plenty to the remaining 7,555,000 Filipinos who are peacefully en-
gaged in the production of hemp, cocoanuts, and other crops.

They tell us that the small amount of sugar produced in the Phil-
ippine Islands could have no appreciable effect on the expansion of
the home sugar industry if all of it were unloaded on our markets;
but they fail to state that, while less than a million and a half acres
planted to either cane or beets will produce an amount of sugar equal
to our entire importation, in the Philippine Islands are 60,000,000
acres of uncleared arable land, owned by the colonial government, a
large portion of which is as rich sugar land as is to be found in the
world, and that one of the main objects of the proposed legislation is
to enable the Philippine government to parcel out a portion of
this vast area in 25,000-acre blocks to sixty corporate sugar estate
exploiters. et ;

The sugar and tobacco industries are as yet side issues in the
Philippines, but they have the area, the soil, the climate, the popula-
tion, the freight rate, and the infinitesimal wage rate absolutely to
swamp the home industry, as they have already arrested its develop-
ment, if we accede to the demands of would-be American exploiters
who are so actively urging the passage of this legislation. _

It is “ up to you” to advise your Representatives in Washington as
to your desires in this matter, in order that they may intelligently
carry them out, and you can not do it too soon for your own protec-
tion, for there will be no use of locking the barn after the horse has

been stolen.

62 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE—ITS DEVELOPMENT
} UNDER HON. JAMES WILSON.

[Address before the eighteenth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Con-
gress, held at Muskogee, Okla., November 19-22, 1907.]

President Lovetanp. Gentlemen of the congress, we have an ardent
supporter of this congress, a faithful worker in this congress for
many years, who, at the personal request of your.president, pre-
pared an article on one of the most important industries in the trans-
Mississippi section, and I will call upon Hon. Truman G. Palmer,
secretary of the American Beet-Sugar Association, to tell you some-
thing of the beet-sugar industry, which is of such great importance
to so many of our great trans-Mississippi States. [Applause. ]

Appress oF TRuMAN G. PAumMeER on “ THE DEPARTMENT oF AGRICUL-
99
TURE.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Delegates to the
Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress: The science of agriculture
and the character, extent, and importance of the work of our Federal
Department of Agriculture, are probably less appreciated than those
in almost any other line of human endeavor.

While Congress is appropriating nearly a billion dollars annually
for the construction of battle ships, for maintaining an army in the
far-off Philippines, and for a multitude of other purposes which
yield us no revenue, but on the contrary load us down with a greater
and greater annual burden, it grudgingly grinds out an appropria-
tion of less than 1 per cent of this amount for agriculture, which
always has and always will furnish the wealth to foot these enormous
expenditures. .

Ages ago we were told that “the first shall be last and the last
shall be first,” and perhaps the time will come when, whatever trim-
ming may be necessitated on other appropriation bills, agriculture
will have as many millions as its chief can profitably employ.

ft is not often that people stop to consider the fact that the quality
and the yield of practically every seed, slip, bulb, and tree which
we put in the ground is the result of the most fascinating, and by
far the most important, science in the world. )

Many of us enjoy a “ New England boiled dinner” occasionally,
but how few stop to think that a few generations ago the vegetables
employed in it were merely tough, fibrous, unedible wild roots.

The wild, uncultivated lettuce, for instance, has a few long, flat,
slender, light green leaves, which look something like mullen leaves,
and they lie as close to the ground as do those of the dandelion.
This worthless, uninviting weed of the fields has been so transformed
by scientists that to-day it is our most popular relish, pleasing to the
eye as well as to the palate; and if you will step into the Government
greenhouses at Washington you can see the original weed and observe
the work which is still being carried on in crossing it with numerous
domesticated species in the effort to produce a still more attractive
variety.

So it is throughout both the vegetable kingdom and the animal
kingdom. To-day we “build” a steer as much as we build a house,

]

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 63

breeding on weight where it is worth the most money per pound,
and breeding off weight where it is worth the least money per pound.

There are no limitations to the work, no possibility of ever reach-
ing the apex, but each forward step adds millions and some of them
hundreds of millions of dollars to our material wealth and pros-
perity. To some of these I will allude later on.

Considering the early history of the Department of Agriculture,
it is not to be wondered at that some misinformed people imagine
that, tucked up under the roof of the Patent Office, there peacefully
reposes a flat-top pine desk and a few gunny sacks of garden seeds
over which swings a strip of pasteboard bearing the inscription,
“ Department of Agriculture.”

Nor is it strange that in their imagination the principal business
of Secretary Wilson and his one or two clerks is to do up neat little
packages of seeds and dole them out to Congressmen from the rural
districts to send to their farmer constituents,

Time was, and not so very long ago at that, when this impression
was true in the main, and the forging ahead by this great Department
has been unaccompanied by any blare of trumpets such as is fre-
quently heard from other house tops.

When the Secretary of the Navy asks for an extra forty million
dollars to add five new battle ships to our fleet in order that the great
good may be accomplished of aweing the world with our greatness;
or when the Secretary of War asks for a few extra tens of millions in
order to send more troops to the Philippines to impress the natives
with our benevolent intentions, the whole world hears of it. But
when at a cost of a few thousand dollars the Secretary of Agriculture
annexes to our products a new variety of plant which adds twenty-
five or fifty million dollars a year to the wealth of the nation, few
people ever hear of it. Yet this is what is going on day after day
and year after year and the agricultural wealth and prosperity so
produced is what makes it possible for our other Secretaries to secure
their vast annual appropriations.

HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT.

From the establishment of this Government until 1839, the science
of agriculture received no consideration in the appropriation bills
passed by Congress and the present Department of Agriculture is
the outcome of a suggestion made in that year by the Hon. Henry L.
Ellsworth, of Connecticut, then Commissioner of Patents. At Mr.
Ellworth’s suggestion, Congress appropriated $1,000 for the purpose
of collecting and distributing seeds, prosecuting agricultural investi-
gations, and preparing agricultural statistics.

The work was continued from year to year by the various Commis-
sioners of Patents until 1862, when Congress provided for an inde-
pendent commissioner.

For the next quarter of a century, during which period much of
this great trans-Mississippi territory was being opened up and
- brought under the plow, the Federal work in behalf of this greatest
of all industries was confined to the meager efforts of a commissioner,
who, of course, was not entitled to a seat with the President’s official
family of advisors.

5

64 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

In 1889 Congress raised the Department to the first rank, making
its head a member of the Cabinet, and appropriated about $1,000,000
for carrying on the work.

Congress was willing to appropriate a million or so a year for this
Department, but the heads of it found it difficult to devise uses for
even such a small amount, and year after year the unexpended por-
tion of the apropriation was returned to the general Treasury.

Notwithstanding this lethargy, much immediate good was accom-
plished and the foundation was laid for greater things in the future
when some one should be found who would grasp the golden op-
portunity set before him.

During the period in which we were paying so little attention to
scientific agriculture, but were multiplying our so-called sage brush
farmers by the millions, European nations had been devoting much
attention to the subject and had built up great departments of agri-
culture, so that as their population became more and more dense and
the farms smaller and smaller, the increased production per acre
through better farming methods and the introduction of new crops
enabled them not only to maintain but: to raise then standard of
living. .

THE DEPARTMENT UNDER JAMES WILSON.

William McKinley was not a farmer, but he was a student who
thoroughly appreciated the economic importance of agriculture to
this nation.

Ever since their Congressional days, McKinley had known James
Wilson intimately, and when in 1896 he was elected President, he
decided that Wilson should have the portfolio of agriculture and
would not take no for an answer.

Wilson had served the people of his State both in the legislature,
in Congress, and as president of the Iowa State Agricultural College.
He had retired from public life with the full determination never
to reenter it, and was peacefully engaged in operating his extensive
Jowa farm on purely scientific principles. McKinley succeeded,
however, and Wilson went into his Cabinet.

From this time on the chronic anemic condition of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture began to yield as the rich red blood was pumped
into its veins. Wilson’s desire was to extend the ramifications of the
Department not only throughout this country, but throughout the
world, and thus lay at our farmers’ fect the seed, the slips, “the trees,
the bulbs, from every civilized portion of the olobe. He wished to
teach our farmers how best to produce both foreign and native prod-
ucts, how to conserve our soil fertility, our forests, and our moisture.

INCREASED APPROPRIATIONS.

But all of this meant scientists and explorers and chiefs of bu-
reaus and clerks and stenographers and huge amounts of printed
matter to disseminate the information gathered, all of which would
require vast sums of money. The customary million or so would not
go very far toward carrying out his ideas. It would not even enable
him to make a start at it: Congress must be induced to double the
regular appropriation at least, or he would be compelled to adopt
the easy-going methods of his predecessors.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 65

He appealed to Congress for more money for the use of nearly
_ every bureau in the Department. He was called before the House
and Senate Committees on Agriculeure to explain why he asked for
an additional $25,000 for this bureau, $50,000 for that one, and a still
larger addition for another.

The older members of these committees were only familiar with
the easy-going methods which had prevailed, and they were unable
to understand how a new man could make good use of such large
increases. However, even what he asked for did not amount to much
when compared to what the other Departments: were getting, and
partly out of curiosity to see what he really would do with the money,
they thought they would humor him once, and gave him nearly all
he asked for.

Fact is, they have been humoring him ever since. for with each
succeeding year he asks for more and more money, until now he is
getting eight millions a year, almost enough to build one battle ship,
and Congress begins to realize that every million expended in this
direction is adding ten, or twenty, or fifty millions to the wealth of
the nation.

The appropriations for the different bureaus have been doubled
and tripled and quadrupled, and in many cases far more than that.

As an illustration, take the case of forestry, concerning which
important subject we have heard much in recent years. Wilson was
familiar with forestry work throughout the world, and was fully
alive to its vast importance not only to our present population, but
more especially to future generations.

In 1897 the agricultural appropriation bill carried but $20,000 for
this Bureau of Forestry. By 1900 it had been doubled. In five
years, or in 1902, it was increased to nearly $150,000; then to
$254,000; $329,000; $400,000; $793,000; $1,000,000; and for the
present year it will be $1,380,000, which is $200,000 more than the
total appropriation for the entire Department in 1890, and as com-
pared with the 1897 appropriation for this bureau, is an increase of
6,900 per cent.

In 1897 the total number of employees of the Department, both in
Washington and elsewhere, was 2,444. At that time the chiefs of
bureaus had whole suites of rooms and the clerks were so far apart
they looked lonesome, while all seemed idle and listless.

To-day every room in the building is crowded with clerks and
stenographers who are huddled in as close as ants in a hill, while
the chiefs must content themselves with a tucked up little office, or
with desk room among numerous assistants. A multitude of small
annex buildings have been constructed, so many in fact it looked at
one time as though they would soon be scattered all over the Mall.
These buildings were filled to overflowing as fast as erected. In
addition to this, a large building had to be rented for the Bureau of
Chemistry, another for the Bureau of Soils, another for the Bureau
of Forestry, another for a seed warehouse, another for pure food
work, and dozens of others for other bureaus, until to-day the Depart-
ment of Agriculture is so spread about that some of the bureaus are
from a half mile to a mile apart, and the Department, in addition
to occupying all of its own buildings, is paying out some $50,000 a
year in rentals. » ‘

8. Doe. 530, 60-1—5

66 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

A magnificent new, white marble building for the Department is
in course of construction and it is the pride of the Secretary. But
since it was begun, a couple of years ago, the Department has grown
so that instead of tearing down the old building, as was contemplated,
there won’t be room in the new building to care for the bureaus
which are scattered about the city in rented buildings.

The Department now employs over 9,100 people, and all who are
located in Washington are crowded almost beyond endurance. Of
the total number of employees, 2,023 are scientists, ranking at the
head of their professions. Some of these men are located in Wash-
ington, others are scattered about the country studying all sorts
of agricultural problems, while others are ransacking every portion
of the civilized world for seeds and plants and trees and bulbs and
methods which can be used to advantage in this country.

No other governmental Department, college, or private institution
in the world employs such a number of scientists or scientific
specialists of greater ability, be they chiefs or assistants, and recog-
nizing the United States Department of Agriculture as the foremost
institution of its kind in the world, the nations of Europe are now
sending their scientists here seeking information.

Supplemented by the effort of able assistants, this accomplishment
of ten years of labor is the result of competent administrative ability,
without which no great enterprise was ever created.

Two-thirds of our entire national revenues are expended for wars,
past and future, while less than 1 per cent of it is spent for the direct
benefit of agriculture, which always has and always will replenish
our war chests.

For the direct benefit of our 40,000,000 rural population, we are
expending 20 cents per capita per annum but $1.39 per farm or less
than 1 cent per acre and the value of our present crop alone ($7,500,-
000,000) is sufficient to operate our Department of Agriculture for
over 900 years.

I once asked Secretary Wilson how much additional money he
could find good use for with each succeeding year. After consider-
ing it for a few moments, he replied: “ If each year Congress would
increase my appropriation by a million dollars, I could make every
dollar of it yield the American people a hundredfold.”

SOME ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE DEPARTMENT.

And what has been accomplished by all this work—I could not
begin to cover it if I talked to you constantly during every session
of this Congress. I can only touch a few high places and leave the
balance to your imagination.

You will appreciate this more fully when I tell you that the De-
partment annually issues more than 1,100 separate and distinct pub-
lications in which are comprised more than 50,000 pages of matter.
More than 12,000,000 copies of its various publications are issued
annually, and considering its great bulk of more than 1,000 pages,
the annual edition of 500,000 copies of the Department Yearbook,
which costs $300,000, is the largest publication in the world.

It takes nearly a million dollars a year to foot the bills of the publi-
cation department alone, in order to lay before the people the result
of the work of the Department scientists.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 6

~I

THE “ WASHINGTON NAVEL” ORANGE.

From an economic point of view, probably the greatest achieve-
ment of the Department under the old régime was the introduction
of the seedless “* Washington Navel” orange. The wife of the Ameri-
can Consul at Bahia, Brazil, sent the Department three little orange
trees of this variety.

One of these was forwarded to Florida, one to California and the
third was planted in one of the Department greenhouses at Washing-
ton. The one sent to Florida died, the one planted in Washington
is still thriving, while the third, planted at Riverside Cal., has fur-
nished all the cuttings either by first or subsequent descent for all the
orchards of that variety in the State.

The bulk of the California orange crop is of the navel variety, and
last year the value of the entire crop was $23,000,000, and the rail-
roads received $11,000,000 more for hauling it to market.

KAFFIR CORN.

Kaffir corn was first seen in this country at the exhibit of the
Orange Free State at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, but it was
not introduced until the eighties, when the Department sent samples
to something over 1,000 correspondents. To-day Kansas, Oklahoma,
and ‘Texas are growing from 1,000,000 to 1,200,000 acres of this prod-
uct, the annual yield being valued at $10,000,000 to $12,000,000.

SORGHUM.

At an early day sorghum was introduced here from France by the
Commissioner of Patents, who had charge of our agricultural work.
To-day a million and a third acres yield our farms some $20,000,000.

RICE.

Some years ago the Department established a station on the Gulf
coast and conducted some rice experiments in Louisiana and Texas.
As a result a large amount of capital was invested in the industry,
constructing great irrigation works and planting vast areas of low
land to rice.

The industry moved on apace, but was confronted with one great
drawback. From a barrel of rice (110 pounds) only 40 pounds of
head rice (or 36 per cent) could be secured, the balance of the kernels
being broken in the threshing and handling.

The rice growers appealed to the Department for assistance and in
1898 Doctor Knapp was sent to China and Japan to study the ques-
tion at first hands and secure a seed rice which would obviate the dif-
ficulty. Doctor Knapp spent many months in the rice-growing dis-
tricts of China and Japan and brought back a quantity of many
varieties of seed.

Result—Louisiana and Texas now annually produce four to five
million barrels of rice, largely a short kernel, Japanese variety, and
instead of a breakage of 64 per cent of the kernels in the threshing
the breakage is but 19 per cent.

68 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BULBS.

We annually import $1,000,000 worth of bulbs, mostly from Hol-
land. The Secretary concluded that our farmers instead of the
Dutchman ought to have this money.

He sent his scientists out to discover where we could best produce
them. In the State of Washington they found ideal soil and clmatic
conditions and began their experiments. Success crowned their
efforts.

Last spring I saw at the Department most gorgeous crocuses, daf-
fodils, tulips, hyacinths, jonquils, and lilhes, all produced from State
of Washington bulbs, and the Department claims that in many cases
the quality is even superior to any of the bulbs which can be secured
in Europe.

CAMPHOR.

In most smokeless powders, camphor is a necessary ingredient.
The camphor of commerce comes almost exclusively from the island
of Formosa, and the island of Formosa is owned by Japan. Look-
ing into the future, it would seem to be desirable that, if possible, we
produce our camphor at home.

The Department is at present carrying on experimental camphor
work in Florida and Texas. In the latter State they have several
hundred trees already growing, with several thousand more ready
to put into the field.

In Florida it has 50 acres to be occupied by trees from seeds de-
rived from various sources in order to secure a product of the highest
camphor content. <A distilling plant on a small commercial scale will
test apparatus being specially devised by the Department, some of
which has already stood the test so well as to seem to justify patent-
ing. While the experiments are confined to two States, there seems
every reason to believe that camphor will do well in the Gulf strip
where the temperature does not fall regularly or for any considerable
time below 15° or 20° F.

If this experiment turns out as expected, not only ~vill $600,000
a year be kept at home, but an important military article will be at
our command, instead of being subject to the will of a foreign and
perhaps hostile nation.

TEA.

We annually import about 100,000,000 pounds of tea, for which we
send to the Orient, $14,500,000, the average import price being 144
cents per pound.

It might almost be said that no one ever dreamed that even a poor
grade of tea could be produced in the United States. But Secretary
Wilson thought otherwise. After a most careful investigation he
established an experimental tea station in South Carolina, the De-
partment furnishing the scientists to aid private capital in operating
two tea farms.

Last year these two farms produced 26,000 pounds of tea, which
sold at 60 to 80 cents per pound at retail, and netted the producer 30
to 40 cents per pound, or two to three times the a Yer AaE.PTAGe paid for
imported tea.

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 69:

Experts declare that the South Carolina tea is equal to the most
delicate and finest teas which come to this country, and it took the
gold medal at the Paris Exposition.

The production at home of all the tea we consume hinges on the
question of labor and the Secretary expects that some day thousands
and tens of thousands of our little pickaninnies will be engaged in
picking tea leaves.

HOPS.

A few years ago disease attacked the American hop plants and it
became necessary to secure a new stock or abandon hop growing.
An expert was dispatched to Bohemia with instructions to secure
10,000 hop plants.

After making a careful study of Bohemia hop culture, the expert
arranged for the shipment of the requisite number. When the Bo-
hemian authorities learned what was about to take place they refused
to allow the plants to be shipped, and the Department expert returned
to Washington. But it was imperative that we have those plants and
back the expert was sent, with instructions to pick up hop plants in
small quantities wherever he could procure them, have them packed
immediately, go with them to the express office, and see that they
were shipped. He was instructed to follow up this procedure until
he had shipped 10,000 plants. When he had shipped 8,000 he cabled
that he could secure no more plants. The reply was that we must
have at least 10,000, and he must get them. In other hop-growing
districts he met with unexpected success, and when he had forwarded
20,000 plants was allowed to return.

We are still growing hops. Our annual production of 40,000,000
to 50,000,000 pounds yields the American farmer from $4,000,000 to
$5,000,000.

DATES.

We annually send abroad over $500,000 for the purchase of dates,
and within one year from the time he accepted the fortfolio of agri-
culture Secretary Wilson had set the machinery in motion whereby
Arizona and California could be presented with a new source of
revenue.

The agricultural explorers of the Department have since explored
all the great date regions of the world. They have penetrated to the
oases of the Sahara. They have gone up the Suez Canal; have made
trips up the Persian Gulf and along the Tigris River: into Beluchi-
stan and throughout the coastal regions of Arabia. They have
brought back thousands of date palms by pulling them across the
desert on camel backs and shipping them by steamers to this country,
many of these palms being presents from the shieks of Arabia and
Algeria.

Most of these date palms are growing in Arizona and southern
California, and some of them direct from the Sahara have fruited in
this country two years after their arrival. Enough of the imported
varieties have fruited to prove conclusively that good dates can be
grown in the Southwest, the result being of such a character that the
demands for seeding dates is greater than the Department has been
able to supply.

70 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Private enterprise has now taken the matter up, a large number of
date gardens are being planted, and we will soon be producing instead
of importing our dates.

RESEEDING THE WESTERN RANGES.

The reseeding of our great Western stock ranges has given satis-
factory results, particularly on the moist mountain meadows, where
the Department has introduced timothy, redtop, red clover, white
clover, and blue grass. It can be safely said that the seeding of these
tame grasses will at least double the carrying capacity of the pastures
and annually add millions and tens of millions of dollars to the value
of our live-stock output.

ALFALFA INTRODUCTIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS.

The great importance and widespread popularity of alfalfa is a
matter of common knowledge. This crop is the foundation of agri-
culture in all the irrigated regions west of the one-hundredth merid-
ian. Without it profitable farming in this area would scarcely be
possible, and through the securing by selection and introduction of
drought-resistant strains it is rapidly becoming an important factor
even in the dry farming of the great plains and transmountain areas.
Indeed, there is not a State in the Union in which some examples of
successful alfalfa culture can not be found.

The introduction of new varieties is of the utmost interest. The
Department of Agriculture began this work during the nineties, when
the now widely advertised Turkestan alfalfa was sent in by one of its
explorers. Since that time this work of introduction has been con-
tinued by means of agricultural explorers, through our diplomatic
representatives in foreign countries, and through correspondence
with missionaries and other interested parties throughout the world.

A new variety has been secured from Peru, which is grown through-
out the high table-lands of the Andes, suitable only for cultivation
under irrigation in the mild climate of our extreme Southwest, where
it promises to yield from one to two crops more than ordinary alfalfa.

A hardy, yellow-flowered form from the dry steppes of western
Siberia, where the mercury sometimes freezes without snow, suitable
for the agriculture of our northern prairie region, was one of the
results of the exploration of 1906. An Arabian form for use in mild
climates, similar to the Peruvian or Andean form already mentioned,
has also been secured. In addition, alkali resistant types from the
deserts of Asia Minor and northern Africa. <A cold resistant strain
from the plains of northern Mongolia and a form from some of the
oases of the Sahara, able to thrive under higher temperatures than
will the one commonly grown, have been secured in this work.

As soon as these new introductions are received they are turned
over to the experts of the Department and investigations are imme-
diately instituted to determine the particular climatic environments,
soils, methods of cultivation, etc., also why they succeed or why they
fail. An advance knowledge of these facts prevents thousands of
dollars of loss annually to farmers, through attempts to cultivate
under unsuitable conditions new and imperfectly understood varie-
ties. It furthermore prevents the setbacks which invariably result

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. yee

from the failures usually attending the introduction of new and little
known crops.
PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT.

The carrying out of the provisions of our recently enacted pure
food and drug act is a new burden as well as honor to the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, where it comes under the direct supervision of
that veteran, world-famous chemist, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, Chief
of the Bureau of Chemistry. Doctor Wiley could interest you for
hours talking on this intricate work, but time permits only an allu-
sion to it.

Already nearly twenty chemical laboratories have been established
in as many cities scattered throughout the land. In these laboratories
over 100 expert chemists are engaged in examining and testing sam-
ples of imported or interstate commerce products, with a view both as
to the contents and branding of the packages.

Over forty inspectors are engaged in visiting factories, inspecting
raw materials, sanitary conditions, and procuring samples from
manufacturers and dealers and sending them to the nearest labora-
tory for analysis.

In Washington it requires over fifty clerks to attend to the details
of this work, which is conferring blessings upon every man, woman,
and child in the country.

STATE EXPERIMENT STATIONS.

The annual appropriation bill of the Department carries an appro-
priation for the experiment stations of all the States, where the Fed-
eral scientists work in conjunction with the State scientists.

At these stations the work covers a vast range of subjects, but I
will only allude briefly to live stock. At the Fort Collins, Colo., sta-
tion they are at work on the breeding of American carriage horses.
In Vermont they are breeding the famous Morgan horse: in Wyo-
ming a type of sheep suitable to range conditions; in Minnesota a
milking shorthorn, while in Maine they are at work developing new
and better breeds of poultry.

SEED ADULTERATION.

No more despicable form of adulteration exists than seed adultera-
tion, where the loss to the purchaser not only represents the value of
the seed, but the cost of cultivation, and the season’s loss of the use of
the land.

T know of a case not a hundred miles from here where a widow wo-
man sowed several acres of grass and the seed proved to be only weed
seed. In the seed-testing laboratory of the Department of Agricul-
ture I have seen samples of commercial alfalfa and clover and other
seeds separated from the weed seed, where the weed seed formed by
far the greater portion of the sample.

The Department gives special attention to the examination of the
quality, germinating power, and purity of vegetable, flower, forage,
and grass seeds and its campaign against the adulteration of both
domestic and imported seeds has resulted in saving our farmers an
almost endless amount of money and effort.

12 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Means to prevent absolutely this heinous offense is now under con-
sideration and the reliable seedsmen of the country are behind the
movement.

PESTS AND BLIGHTS.

It is as important that pests and blights be eradicated, as it is
that new plants be introduced, and the number which have been
checked or eradicated by the Department is legion. It is safe to say
that our farmers are being saved far more than $100,000,000 a year
as a result of this class of work alone.

The work of the Department in inducing the apple farmers to use
arsenical sprays against the coddling moth is saving them $20,000,000
annually.

The San Jose scale which at one time threatened to eliminate not
only our fruit trees, but our shade trees as well, has been practically
eradicated by the use of the lime-salt-sulphur spray so extensively
used by the advice of the Department.

The cotton boll weevil, which causes an annual loss of $25,000,000
is being controlled wherever the recommendations of the Department
are adopted; and the cotton worm, which once caused such havoc, is
virtually a thing of the past.

I once was present when a delegation of Massachusetts cranberry
growers appealed to the Secretary for help. A blight had stricken
their plants. One of the delegation had lost a $4,000 crop, another
$6,000, and another $12,000, while numerous others had_ suffered
lesser losses.

The Department’s annual appropriation bill was then pending at
the east end of the Capitol.

The Secretary assured them that the Department could, and would
gladly assist them, but that everything depended upon the size of
his pending appropriation bill. He suggested that if the Massa-
chusetts Senators and Congressmen had enough influence with their
fellow-members to induce them to grant what he was asking for,
the aid of the Department was certain. Those cranberry growers
took the hint, boarded the first car for the Capitol, and they did not
leave Washington until the entire Massachusetts delegation had been
pledged not only to vote for, but to work for the bill.

The Secretary got his appropriation, his scientists got busy, and
the cranberry blight was eradicated.

SEED AND PLANT INTRODUCTION.

One of the most interesting as well as important classes of work
of the Department is that which is conducted by the Office of Seed
and Plant Introduction and Distribution, under which the foreign
explorations are conducted. The office was established early in 1808
and is part of the Bureau of Plant Industry over which Doctor
Galloway so ably presides. Since its establishment there have been
introduced through this office exactly 21,531 plant shipments. These
thousands of new introductions vary in quantities from a single seed
to several tons of seeds; from a single cutting to large shipments of
living plants.

The range of crops covered is remarkable---from new varieties of
oats for Alaska to East Indian mangos for Porto Rico, Hawaii, and

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 73

Florida. Practically every condition of climate and soil in the world
can be duplicated in the United States and its possessions, and the
introductions of the last few years have covered this whole range of
climate. Since January 1, 1904—that is, during the last four years—
exactly 11,635 numbers have been added to our inventory of newly
introduced things.

At the present time the Department has in China an agricultural
explorer who has been there nearly three years. He has covered
thousands of miles. of territory; has visited the principal places of
interest agriculturally in Manchuria, southern Siberia, and northern
China; has twice faced death, once among the Chinese and once
among the Cossacks, and has sent in over 1,000 shipments of seeds
and scions. Among the things secured by Mr. Frank Meyer are a
hardy persimmon, which will probably thrive in the New England
States; dry land rices, new varieties of soy beans, drought resisting
alfalfa, valuable varieties of Chinese pears, peaches, plums, quinces,
apricots, cherries, pistaches, grapes, and many new and valuable orna-
mental shrubs and trees.

Among the things which are being sought for in foreign countries at
the present time are the hardy bamboos of the Orient; new varieties
of barley; the best cork oaks in order to start the cork oak industry
in this country; better varieties of hemp for the Kentucky hemp
growers: East Indian mangos for the Florida mango growers, mat-
ting plants from different parts of the world to stimulate the pro-
duction of a supply for our matting manufacturers;-wet land crops
for the south, such as the yautias, and taros of the Orient; wild
apples, wild asparagus, wild celery, and other wild plants for the
use of the many hundreds who are engaged in the breeding of our
cultivated crops and who desire new materials of a wilder character
for their breeding experiments.

BEET SUGAR.

Four months after James Wilson became Secretary of Agriculture,
Congress passed a tariff bill, the sugar schedule of which was devised
for the express purpose of encouraging the production of sugar from
American grown beets.

For many years one of Mr. Wilson’s hobbies had been that the
American farmer was entitled to and should receive the $100.000,000,
which we were annually sending abroad for sugar, a product which
he was perfectly capable of producing.

At that time six struggling beet sugar factories were in existence
and were paying the farmers between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 an-
nually for their beets. The new Secretary secured a special item in
his appropriation bill allowing him money for sugar investigations
and experiments. Doctor Wiley was as much of a beet sugar enthus-
iast as was the Secretary, and the Bureau of Chemistry, the’ Bureau
of Plant Industry, the Bureau of Soils, as well as other bureaus
immediately took the fever. Different varieties of seed were im-
ported from all the seed growing districts of Europe and thoroughly
tested for vitality, germination, etc. Bulletins of instructions to
farmers were issued, showing how to produce the crop and outlining
its advantages. Vast quantities of colored maps were issued showing

74 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

the theoretical thermal belt of the United States in which beets could
be grown.

Mr. Saylor, one of the Secretary’s most valued and astute friends,
was induced to travel about the United States from ocean to ocean as
well as in Porto Rico, Cuba and Hawaii, gathering information con-
cerning the sugar industry and its progress in order that an annual
report could be published on this subject.

Such a demand grew up for these reports that one year Congress
ordered 120,000 copies printed, and from the first year of the Secre-
tary’s incumbency a fresh report has appeared annually with the
regularity of clockwork. And what has been the measure of success?

Instead of 6 beet sugar factories we now have 63. Instead of an
investment of a couple of millions in the industry there is now in-
vested in it nearly $100,000,000. Instead of the industry being con-
fined to three States, it has spread out over sixteen States, running
from New York on the east to California on the west and last year
the farmers of the United States received over $22,000,000 for their
crop of sugar beets.

SINGLE GERM SUGAR BEET SEED.

There is nothing “ hide bound” about the Department of Agri-
culture. Its work is not confined to working out the preconceived
ideas of its head, its chiefs, or its employees, but, on the contrary,
practical suggestions are always welcomed.

Let me give you an illustration of this. The so-called sugar beet
seed is in reality a cluster of seeds confined within a fibrous sub-
stance known as a beet ball. The average number of plants which
germinate from each ball is 34, and in whatever manner these balls
may be planted there is a surplusage of beetlets which must be pulled
up. This is laborious work, is done on hands and knees, and just at
the opportune time. Even with the utmost care much damage is done
to the remaining beetlets, which results in a loss of tonnage.

I conceived the idea of breeding a beet ball’ which should contain
but one seed, so that the surplus beetlets could be removed with a hoe
and without damage to the remaining ones. I suggested the idea to
several sugar men and was laughed at for my pains. I suggested it
to the Secretary of Agriculture and he jumped clear out of his chair
and exclaimed, “ Yes, we can do it, and will do it, and it will mean
untold millions for the American sugar beet farmers.”

To make a long story short, commercial sugar beet seed contains
from 1 to 2 per cent of balls carrying but one seed. Two thousand of
these single germ balls were selected and planted. Two years ago last
fall the first generation came to seed and the best plants showed 26 per
cent of the single germ variety. Last fall the second generation
grown from the 26 per cent plant was harvested and showed a frac-
tion over 50 per cent single germ balls.

To-day it is confidently expected that within from four to eight years
we will have this single germ characteristic fixed and can then com-
mence producing commercial seed of this kind. If we could have
used such seed last year it would have meant more than $10,000,000
additional money to the American farmers. When the bulletin which
I wrote on the subject for the Department was published the Euro-
pean beet sugar papers copied from it extensively and universally

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 75

ridiculed the idea, but thanks to the work of our Department of Agri-
culture we will soon distance the scientific beet seed growers of
Europe who have been steadily engaged at it for over a century.

SUMATRA WRAPPER TOBACCO.

A few years ago we were annually importing about $8,000,000
worth of high priced Sumatra wrapper tobacco. Secretary Wilson
wondered if it were not possible to turn that money into the pockets
of our American farmers rather than to send it to the Orient.

He dispatched a scientist to the island of Sumatra where he re-
mained nearly a year, studying soils, climatic conditions, and cultural
methods. He not only brought back seed, but samples of their most
productive soils.

The next move was to discover whether or not we possessed similar
soils, and corps of soil scientists scoured our various States in their
search. Like soils were discovered in Connecticut, in Georgia, and
in Florida, but of course none of these localities possessed the climate
of Sumatra. Ergo—make it. The Department tented over an acre
of ground in each of several localities and placed a scientist in charge
of each station. Result—instead of as heretofore a small crop of
inferior tobacco, worth 9 or 10 cents per: pound, a large crop of high-
grade wrapper was produced which brought from 30 to 60 cents per
pound. Then private capital embarked in the industry, and last
year 7,200 acres of this superior wrapper tobacco was grown under
tents in Florida, Georgia, and Connecticut, and preparations are
under way for the investment of several more million dollars in the
industry.

The tobacco so produced in Georgia and Florida brought an aver-
age price of 60 cents per pound and the average returns in those
States was $600 per acre. Last year alone nearly $4,000,000, which
otherwise would have been sent to the Orient for wrapper tobacco,
went into the pockets of the tobacco farmers of these three States.

From the Connecticut fields, the Bureau of Plant Industry has
selected a type of wrapper which has proved to be one of the finest
types ever produced, and this is rapidly replacing all other types in
Georgia and Florida.

It seems to be a question of but a very few years when the remain-
ing $4,500,000 we now send abroad for wrappers, will go into the
pockets of our American farmers instead.

CUBAN FILLER TOBACCO.

Having solved the wrapper tobacco question, the Secretary set
about to solve the problem of diverting to the pockets of the Ameri-
can farmer the $14,000,000 we annually send to the Tropics for filler
tobacco.

He sent his scientists to the most famous tobacco districts of Cuba
to study conditions as they had been studied in Sumatra. On their
return similar soils were found in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Ohio,
and there the Cuban seed was planted.

Last year 6,535 acres were planted to this tobacco in the four
States mentioned. The yield was from 550 pounds per acre in Texas
to 1,060 pounds in Ohio. The price received by the growers was

76 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

from 113 cents in Ohio to 24 cents in Texas. The returns per acre
ran from $115 in Ohio to $175 in Florida, and the industry is already
yielding our farmers nearly a million dollars a year. By the cour-
tesy of the Secretary I have smoked cigars produced from selected
Texas grown tobacco which were equal to any 25-cent or three for a
dollar Cuban cigar you can buy.

It should not be long before the farmers of Ohio and the Gulf
coast will be receiving “that $14,000,000 which we now send to the
West Indies for filler tobacco.

MACARONI WHEAT.

Early in his work with the Department the Secretary concluded
that it was folly for this great wheat- producing country to annually
import millions of dollars worth of macaroni and vermicelli.

To determine the exact character of the wheat used to produce it
he had Doctor Wiley analyze several samples, and then he dispatched

a scientist to the Mediterranean to study the whole subject and bring
Bie samples of the wheat.

There he found the manufacturing end, but not the wheat fields.
European manufacturers are more secretive than are those of
America, but a chance remark led him to purchase a ticket for Rus-
sia. After an extended search through numerous wheat-growing
provinces he landed away up on the arid plains of the Steppes of
Russia. Although the annual rainfall of that desolate country was
but 10 inches, there he found the wheat fields which were supplying
the macaroni factories of the Mediterranean. He shipped three car-
loads of this wheat to Washington, and subsequently, on the deserts
of Algeria, he discovered a similar variety which was being used for
the same purpose.

These samples of drought-resisting and rust-resisting wheat were
distributed to farmers in our semiarid regions west of the one hun-
dredth meridian where we had heretofore been unable to produce
wheat. To the utter astonishment of our farmers, fields of more than
30 bushels to the acre were secured with an 8-inch rainfall and the
first year’s production was used entirely for seed.

In 1902 we raised 200,000 bushels of it. In 1904 we produced
10,000,000 bushels, and last year our crop of durum or macaroni wheat
reached the enormous sum of 60,000,000 bushels, thus in a single sea-
son pouring an additional stream of $50,000,000 gold into the pockets
of our western farmers.

As. soon as the production of this cereal outran the home consump-
tion, the Department introduced it abroad. While to-day we are both
producing and importing macaroni, the foreign demand for this
wheat is more than sufficient to use our whole crop if it was desirable
to let it go.

Not only has the introduction of durum wheat enormously en-
riched our farmers by extending the wheat-producing area through-
out large portions of the arid “West where other varieties will not
thrive, but this variety has been found to be particularly resistant to
rust and yields good crops where ordinary wheats are completely de-
stroyed by this disease. Its use is not confined to the manufacture of
macaroni, but it is used to a considerable extent for ordinary bread

THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES. 77

flour and for blending with other flours, having in many respects
superior qualities.

This unheralded experiment cost but a few thousand dollars and
already yields us enough money to add six new battle ships to our
Navy every year. In one or two decades the cash returns from this
single experiment will exceed the total value of our Navy and coast
defenses combined. And yet we cheerfully expend over $100,000,000
a year on our Navy making an effort to impress the world with our
greatness and warning the nations not to invade our territory, while
many good people grumble at the miserly eight millions a year ex-
pended on the industry which enables us to strut the seas.

Battle ships never yet opened up great foreign markets. The peo-
ple of the world buy where they can purchase the cheapest. Teaching
our farmers how to produce abundantly and cheaply the crops which
the world wants and must have is what opens up foreign markets;
and if for a decade we were to reverse the order of our appropriations
and judiciously expend a hundred millions a year on agriculture and
eight millions on the Navy, our power, our greatness, our prosperity,
and our happiness would be the marvel of the world.

We rightfully boast of our inventive genius and of our marvelous
prosperity, but in scientific agriculture, in good roads, and in internal
waterways we are far behind most of the great nations of the world.

While neglecting these prolific sources of national wealth we have
expended over $500,000,000 to satisfy national pride and float our
flag in the Orient. Our War Department absorbs $122,000,000 a
year and the Navy Department a hundred millions more, while fifty
millions is annually absorbed in running the Philippines.

With this vast annual expenditure on external affairs and only
eight millions for agriculture, is it not time for an awakening as to
the far greater importance of increased expenditures on internal
affairs where each dollar expended, instead of calling for additional
thousands of expenditures, will mean thousands of revenue and
wealth.

MENACES TO AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

As to actual and active menaces to our agricultural prosperity and
development we have but one. With our recently acquired tropical
possessions a new and important economic problem has appeared
which must soon be settled.

We annually import about $400,000,000 worth of agricultural prod-
ucts. About one-half of these products, mostly sugar and tobacco,
are produced in the temperate zone as well as in the Tropics, and Sec-
retary Wilson is teaching the American farmers how to produce them
in this western and southern country, as well as in some portions of
the Eastern States.

The other $200,000,000 worth are produced only in the Tropics, and
consist of such articles as coffee, rubber, fibers, cacao, copra, indigo,
etc., all of which grow to perfection in our island possessions.

That grizzled old statesman, Secretary Wilson, recommends that
we teach the people of our island possessions to produce the
$200,000,000 worth of tropical products which we can not raise at
home, thus helping those people without injury to our own farmers.
But not all statesmen are as practical as James Wilson. There is a

78 THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES.

small bevy of self-styled * altruistic statesmen ” who, for reasons best
known to themselves, ridicule the idea of aiding the people of our
island possessions to produce what we are unable to produce at home.
They insist that our island people be coaxed to produce our sugar
and tobacco, thus robbing the American farmer of two of the most
profitable crops which the Secretary of Agriculture has taught them
to produce, as well as depriving them of all hope of eventually pro-
ducing on American farms tbe $120,000,000 worth of sugar and
tobacco which we still import.

It is devoutly to be hoped that the Wilson type of statesmanship
will prevail; that in due course of time we will produce on the main-
land every article we are capable of producing, and that we will
enrich our insular possessions as well as make us more self-sustaining
as a nation, by encouraging our insular population to produce all
that we are unable to produce at home.

TO ATTAIN MAXIMUM ECONOMIC RESULTS.

As directly affecting agriculture, the natural sequence of govern-
mental expenditures should be: First, teach the farmers what to pro-
duce and how best to produce it. Second, by constructing and main-
taining at least one national highway across each State, furnish an
object lesson to our people which would result in a universal system
of good roads throughout the States, thus affording the farmer the
lowest cost of transportation on all his products to the nearest station
or warehouse or wharf. Third, a complete system of inland natural
waterways and canals, by means of which he would be able to deliver
his export crops to tide water at a minimum freight rate. Fourth,
deep harbors which would accommodate the merchant marine of the
world, and then, if not enough ships are to be had to transport our
products to the markets of the world, create a great American mer-
chant marine by means of ship subsidies. This, gentlemen, is the
logical sequence for economic development, not only in agriculture,
but in the main, for our great manufacturing and mining industries
as well.

O

}

cay

ALP LN Rays
LL sae OW as
HN ia i sh Se -
by Le

res

WAU INNNNLAUN AN)
0 021 529 517 5.
f

IVAN As 104 142.72,.. “ONGRESS

DANN A

® 021 529 317 5