1,000 tons of beet sugar; it had risen to 12,000 tons in 1892-3; to 40,000 tons in 1897-8; to 73,000 tons in 1900-01; and 184,606 tons in 1901-02. The crop to be harvested the coming autumn will doubtless make 250,000 tons. The canesugar product of this country last year was 311,328 tons. But while these figures seem large, it should be remembered that we imported from other countries last year (including Hawaii and Porto Rico) 2,146,699 tons, and that the Nation's consumption of sugar has doubled in the past eighteen years. Only 175,083 acres were put into beets last year, their product being 1,685,688 tons of beets, with an average sugar content of 14.8 per cent.

There is invested in the industry $30,000,000, and the farmers received $8,437,000 last year for their beets. The Department of Agriculture estimates the needs of the Nation for the present year at 2,500,000 tons of sugar, of which Porto Rico and Hawaii will produce 400,000 and the sugar-beet and cane growers 500,000 tons more, leaving 1,600,000 tons to be imported from abroad. To supply the needs of the Nation five hundred factories are needed, and it is believed by many that eventually these will be obtained. Michigan leads in the industry, having seventeen factories; California has eight, Utah six, Colorado six, Nebraska three, New York two, Minnesota, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon, one each—a total of forty-seven. The Agricultural Department reports that forty-two of these were in operation last year.

Some problems of sugar-beet production are not yet solved. One is that of the utilization of the waste. This consists in the tops of the beets (the leaves and the crown of the beet itself), and the pulp that remains after the factory has extracted the sugar from the root. The pulp can be utilized as food for cows, and thus make the industry assist dairying. In Europe it is dried and manufactured into a sort of cake that is excellent feed. The tops are generally returned to the soil as a fertilizer, though these, too, may with proper management be used for feed. The average farmer, how ever, makes little use of these by-products. The complete utilization of the beet will

make it more profitable and add to the attractiveness of the crop.

The labor question is by no means a trifling matter in the development of this industry. In the Western States, where the people like to do things on a big scale, where the large operations of the wheatraisers have accustomed the communities to tilled areas covering hundreds and thousands of acres owned by a single individual, it seems petty drudgery to put in the year cultivating a twenty or forty acre farm. In a sense it runs counter to the traditions of the West. It is for this reason that the promoters of new factories send out missionaries to secure colonists of foreign birth, even furnishing land and buildings if settlers will but undertake the business. The bounties offered by several States are evidence of general interest and also of a recognition of the labor handicap.

On the manufacturer's side there is promise of abundant profits. Sugar is a staple; this Nation will not for many years manufacture enough for its needs; hence violent price-fluctuations are improbable. Henry T. Oxnard and W. B. Cutting, directors of the American BeetSugar Company, said, in a letter written in 1899, that of their Nebraska plants, "Grand Island in 1898 made a profit per ton of beets of $2.89 on a tonnage of 18,546 tons; Norfolk made a profit of $4.50 per ton on 31,000 tons, and Chino a profit of $5.06 per ton on a tonnage of 47,302 tons." Regarding another factory they say that, based on operations in Nebraska and California, the average price paid for beets is $4; that $3 will cover the entire cost of manufacturing a ton of beets into sugar (producing about 250 pounds), giving a total of $7. Selling the sugar at 4 cents a pound gives a profit of $3 a ton.

Against this rosy view must be considered the cost of maintaining the factory through several months when there are no beets to handle; that not all factories are run to their full capacity during the "campaign," as the period of sugar-making is called; that in every factory a large sum is invested-$600,000 to $1,000,000

together with the task of educating the people and facing the discouragements and annoyances that afflict a comparatively new industry.

In the world's sugar production the beet

cent.

has already outstripped the cane. While the world's production of sugar has increased 320 per cent. since 1860, cane sugar increased only 100 per cent., but beet sugar has a showing of 1,179 per In 1899-1900 (the latest statistics at hand covering the principal sugargrowing countries) the beet-sugar product was 5,252,944 tons, and the cane-sugar The beet-sugar product 2,525,000 tons. production is reported thus: United States, 72,944 tons; Germany, 1.790,000; Austria, 1,120,000; France, 970,000; Russia, 900,000; Belgium, 300,000; Holland, 100,000.

The older factories have reduced the cost of production from 25 to 33% per cent., and the teachings of old-world methods are being utilized, particularly those of Germany, where 440 factories are in operation. Secretary Wilson thinks that, once the by-products are made use of, American farmers will be eager to take up the industry wherever climatic conditions permit.

The United States Crop Reporter gives the following average of sugar beets.

T

To diversify agriculture, as in the West; to succeed a waning industry, as in the lumber regions of Michigan; to add another item to the Nation's list of products, reducing its need of importation-these are some of the broader advantages claimed for the beet-sugar industry. With a large area adapted by soil and climate to sugar-beet raising, and with capital in abundance seeking profitable investment, it will be strange if the United States does not find a way to make the industry a prominent and permanent one.

HE cart was painted a bright yellow, and as it crawled along the flat in the wake of a well-kept white horse it looked like a box of concentrated sunshine. The driver, lounging upon elbow among an array of swollen hemp bags and new brooms-whose brushes stood up around him like the palisades of a fortification-held a loose rein, and whistled a lively tune so that it carried on the soft wind across the intervening lot and let itself in at the open kitchen windows, between which Mrs. Winans stood at the ironing-table.

She looked out over the smooth mowing, already growing green under the unusually warm sun of early April, and saw the creeping square of color on the narrow brown road; saw, too, as one not a lover of nature sees, that the woodland on the other side of the road showed scarlet and yellow-green blossom fringes, and that the hills climbing against a pale blue sky beyond were fused by distance into red

dish-purple masses of sap-thrilled branches and boles. An insect buzz brought her glance back to the kitchen, where a bluebottle fly beat a foolish head against the window-pane instead of escaping through the open lower sash. To her the bluebottle fly and the tin peddler's cart suggested spring far more than soft winds or vivid sunlight, greening meadows or leafuncrimpling woods and hills. She touched a moist finger-tip to the iron in her hand, set it "sissing on the flat stand, and stepped to the garret door.

"Louizy Ann!"

Answer sounded faintly back from remote upper regions, and she returned to the ironing-table. Presently a young, quick step came down the stairs, and Louisa Ann appeared with Tom Henry in her arms. His close-cut flaxen hair showed a tatter of cobwebs.

"Mother's pet!" Mrs. Winans said fondly. "But what have you let him get into, Louizy Ann?"

"He would poke into every corner." Louisa Ann brushed off the cobweb tatters with a small, work-reddened hand. At times she felt Tom Henry a tiresome responsibility. "I sh'd have got th' beds made before only he kept pullin' off th' quilts."

"You shouldn't have let him." It seemed the proper thing to speak like this, although she never permitted Louisa Ann to exercise authority over Tom Henry. "There's a tin peddler's cart comin', an' I want you should fetch down them two bags of rags that I've been savin' sence fall. Tom 'Nry, don't tag Louizy Ann! That's a dear."

But Tom Henry tottered unsteadily on, his fat, uncertain legs set wide apart, and a look of grave fixidity on his round facethe look of a traveler who had set himself to make a long distance. To Tom Henry the space between the ironing-table and the stairs door, through which the faded calico skirt of his young nurse was disappearing, seemed difficult and slippery leagues. Louisa Ann, intent upon dragging both well-filled bags down the stairs at the same time, did not notice the little flaxen head lifted to her from the lower landing with inarticulate gurgles. She dropped one bag, gave it a push to quicken its descent, then dropped the other in sheer horror as a baby voice raised a protesting wail.

"My land!" Mrs. Winans snatched the screaming child from the avalanche of scattering rags. "You careless good-fornothing, you! What do you mean?"

"I didn't go to do it!" cried the girl, shrinking under the smart slap. Then she colored vividly, more from mortification at being punished before a stranger than at the pain, for beside the outer doorway stood a woman whose keen gray eyes expressed a lively interest in what was happening. Mrs. Winans followed the girl's glance, and her lifted hand dropped.

"Why, how d'ye do, Mis' Dunham? I'm that glad to see you," she said, with the hastiness of confusion. "Come in an' set down. Take th' rags out to th' door, Louizy Ann." And as the girl dragged one bag away, she added: "I do get reel riled sometimes.

This mornin' I have a big ironin', an' Louizy Ann must spill them rags onto Tom 'Nry, an'

now I'll have to get him to sleep before I c'n do another stitch of work. It ain't laughin' easy keepin' th' town's poor."

"But you've only a few to keep, have you?" Mrs. Dunham's eyes rested on Mrs. Winans as if she was thinking that belonging to the town's poor might not be easy.

Mrs. Winans winced under the look.

"Well, there's Louizy Ann-she's consumptive, so nobody has been willin' to take her as bound girl; and there's Auntie Peters, noddin' same as ever, an' sayin' over an' over: My son John run off with Sally Chapman !' I do get so tired hearin' that jargon that I feel as if I should fly. She's out in the L room now, chatterin' it to herself. I had to put her out there for a spell. I jest couldn't hear her another minute. You saw her when you was in before, you know."

"Yes," assented Mrs. Dunham. “What ever made her get in such a way?"

"She's been so ever sence her son married a girl who led him a life. He took to drink an' blowed his brains out." Mrs. Winans spoke with the indifference bred of familiarity with startling facts. "An' yistid'y there was a new arrival—a man."

"I wish it had been a boy. I'm thinking of taking a boy to help around my place," Mrs. Dunham said, reflectively.

"I wish it had been a boy, if he was any good," Mrs. Winans answered, with some asperity. "But he was a boy about sixty years ago, I sh'd think. I asked him this mornin' how old he was, an' he Isaid if his mother was livin' she could tell me. He's sort of paralytic; can't do much but set in a chair. I guess he's pretty well schooled. I saw him readin' out of a little book with queer letters in it, an' he told me it was a Greek Testament. I asked him if he was a teacher by trade, an' he said he was only a scholar in th' school of patience. He gets such queer talk from readin' such queer letterin', I suppose."

Mrs. Dunham's mouth twisted oddly at the corners.

"I came around this way after a grist to see if I could buy a setting of Buff Wyandotte eggs," she said. "Have you any to spare?"

Mrs. Winans looked gratified. Her

Buff Wyandottes were her pride. How ever, she did not assent too easily, although she wished to accommodate this new neighbor. Mrs. Dunham had bought a fifteen-acre farm a half-mile from the poorhouse, and moved there, a stranger, the previous fall. People wondered about her, yet learned little more than that she was a widow with no children and the ability to look sharply after her own interests. She could tell a cord of wood at a glance, and knew a straight furrow. The man who slighted his work or tried to get the better of her in a bargain was sharply brought to face facts, and went away outwardly grumbling, inwardly admiring.

"Mebbe I might let you have a settin' of Buff Wyandottes," Mrs. Winans answered, after a pause, as if for reflection.

"Don't rob yourself." Mrs. Dunham's polite dissent was that of one who felt that such was expected.

Mrs. Winans equaled her in politeness. "Our hens are great layers, so it won't be robbin' myself. There! if that tin peddler ain't here a'ready. C'n you wait until I bargain with him?"

"Surely. I'll talk with Auntie Peters while I'm waiting." Mrs. Dunham got up and moved toward the L room.

"Guess it'll be one-sided talkin'," muttered Mrs. Winans as she went out to the peddler's cart with Tom Henry hanging a sleepy head over her shoulder. She was not pleased to have Mrs. Dunham see the L room, which was always littered with odds and ends.

But it was not the unswept floor, the jumble of left-overs and put-by things, that arrested Mrs. Dunham's attention as she opened the door leading from the kitchen into the L room; neither was it the bent little old woman who sat knitting in a splint-bottomed rocker, her palsied head nodding in dreary rhythm to the drone with which she met the caller's entrance: "My son John ran off with Sally Chapman !" Mrs. Dunham's glance was caught by that of a man in a low armchair by the sunny outer doorway. He was thin, and would have been tall in standing, with a quantity of iron-gray hair brushed back from a fine forehead; his delicate fingers, long and tapering, were busied about a bit of carving. Beside him, on a broken stand, lay a Greek Testament. For an instant the two

looked at each other; then the man resumed his work, and Mrs. Dunham, with a rush of vivid color, turned to the nodd ng old woman.

"Well, Auntie Peters, how are you today?"

A pleased expression stole over Auntie Peters's face. She looked as if groping through her feeble mind. for a suitable answer to the question-failing in which she held up her knitting. Mrs. Dunham took it testingly between thumb and finger.

"How good you knit, Auntie! And such a nice, sensible color this gray is, too. Have you th' other sock done?"

The faded, upraised eyes grew troubled; the wrinkled face settled again into vacuity; and the palsied head nodded to the refrain of years:

"My son John ran off with Sally Chapman !"

Mrs. Dunham handed back the sock, the usual keenness of her eyes changed to a pitying softness. She crossed the rough floor and stood beside the man in the armchair. He did not look up.

"Do you carve much?"

"No. I am doing this for Auntie Peters. I thought it might please her." "You are carving it well."

"One can't carve very well with no tool but a dull jackknife."

The even coolness of his words might have put another at a distance, but if Mrs. Dunham felt herself labeled intrusive, she showed no consciousness of it. She regarded him in grave silence, and then looked through the door to where, across the yard, Mrs. Winans was haggling over a granite-ware pie-plate, her shrill treble rising in crescendo to the peddler's irritated dissent as he groped in the depths of his yellow-painted cart.

"This is no place for you," she said, gently.

"Our place is where we are put," the man answered.

Her look went beyond immediate objects to the hills, whose beautiful undulations lifted against a pale horizon. The air was fresh with the magic potency of spring as it blew in at the L room door; a bluebird warble, faint yet deliciously suggestive of the season, came from afar; and a song-sparrow, lighting upon a post in the yard, lifted its musical lilt: "Sing! sing! sing! sing! sing it quick-ly!"