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.