THE BEET SUGAR VENTURE.

A more proper heading, I think, would be "Sugar Beet Raising," but everybody at the time spoke of it the other way, and so it shall be. I did raise hundreds of tons of sugar beets, and fed them to the dairy, but had only enough of them manufactured to get half a ton of sugar, which was exhibited at the New Orleans exposition—the second year of the exposition—and probably the first sugar ever made from Washington grown beets.

The first winter I spent on the London hop market (1884) my attention was called to the remarkably cheap German made beet sugar, selling then at "tuppence" a pound, as the English people expressed it—four cents a pound, our currency. If beet sugar could be produced so cheaply, why could we not make it, I queried, knowing as I did what enormous yields of beets could be obtained in the rich soils of the Puyallup and White River valleys. So I hied me off to the German sugar district, and visited several of the factories, taking only a hasty view of their works, but much impressed with the importance of the subject.

The following spring I planted two acres on one of my White River farms, and Thomas Alvord planted two acres. I harvested forty-seven tons from my two acres and at different times during their later growth sent a dozen samples or more to the beet sugar factory at Alvarado, California, to be tested. The report came back highly favorable—rich and pure, and if figures would not lie, here was a field better than hops—better than any crop any of the farmers were raising at the time. So Mr. Alvord and myself organized a beet sugar company, and the next year increased our acreage to further test the cost of raising and of their sugar producing qualities. I raised over a hundred tons that year, and we sent ten tons to the Alvarado factory to extract the sugar—meanwhile had sent about a hundred samples at different times, to be tested. Not all of the reports came back favorable, and the conclusion was reached to test farther another year, and accordingly a still larger acreage was planted. That year I sent my second son, Fred Meeker, to a school of chemistry in San Francisco, and when the factory started up in Alvarado, to the factory, for what was termed the campaign, to work and to learn the business. Our samples were again sent with the same result, some were exceedingly rich and pure, while others would yield nothing. Fred wrote that the beets that had taken a second growth were worthless for producing sugar.

That letter settled the whole question as our open, moist autumn weather would surely at times destroy the crop, and would make it extremely hazardous to enter into the business and so the whole matter was dropped as well as $2,500.00 of expenses incurred. Subsequently, however, the business has been successfully established in the drier climate of the eastern part of Washington and Oregon.