The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 27, 1917, Page 9

Page views left: 0

You have reached the hourly page view limit. Unlock higher limit to our entire archive!

Subscribers enjoy higher page view limit, downloads, and exclusive features.

Text content (automatically generated)

TP s S kG A g e N bring the grower $2600, so it can be seen that the guaranteed price is suf- ficient to insure the grower fair pay for his labor and interest on his invest- ment, which is more than a great many farmers get. BEET ACREAGE IS LESS AT BILLINGS But it appears that despite the fact that the crdinary beet sugar grower around Billings is guaranteed .a living wage, beet growing is not as popular as it used to be. While in past years, more than 20,000 acres have been plant- ed to beets in the Billings territory, this year the acreage has dropped to about 15,000. With a practically “sure thing” in the way of a living wage guaranteed them in sugar beets, many of the growers are preferring to take the chance of a real profit (or of a loss) .in hay or grain. There appear to be a great many ad- vantages in sugar beets as a crop. For one thing, they reduce the alkali in soil to a large extent. The.cultivation of beets requires the clearing of the land of weeds. This insures a larger grain crop than before beets were . cropped. . The killing off of weeds i?_enefits the whole section to a certain extent. ; Another advantage of beets is in the nse the grower is able to make. of the tops. They make fine feed for cattle,, sheep and ‘hogs and make good en- silage. The. manure from the stock puts back in- the soil whatever fer- tility has been ‘taken away. Beets are " usually growrd for about three years, . then the land is cropped to grain and then put in "alfalfa for several years. This enables the section to be turned over largely to stockfarming &nd adds,_. further to land .values. FARMERS STARTED THE SUGAR BEET INDUSTRY But w"ith all: these ‘undeniable .ad- ' vantages, the growers-around Billings, as I pointed out bhefore, are turning away from sugar beets.. To find the reason why;-let us look back a few years to the beginning of the sugar in- - dustry in Montana. A group of for- ward looking farmers were responsible for bringing the factory to Billings. They knew the country would be good for sugar beets. The Great Western, which is-understood to have been as- signed the Montana-Wyoming-Nebras- ka-Colorado territory by tacit agree- ment with other sugar manufacturers, didn’t want to come into the field just then. So the Billings farmers went ahead and awarded contracts for a $1,000,000 factory themselves. That woke the Great Western people up and they finally came in and took the fac- tory over. They signed up growers on contracts calling for payments of $5 per ton for sugar beets. Sugar was selling for only 3% cents a pound then, and it wasn't selling for that much at the factory; it had to be shipped to New York to bring this price, Prices of other commodities . 'were low, too, labor costs yere less, and the farmers were able to make a: fair profit in most cases at the $5 rate. Apparently,.. too, the sugar company to be pretty prosperous. was able to do business at the 3%- cent rate for sugar; they certainly were able to keep out of bankruptey. Sugar came up in price gradually year by year, and so 'did other com=* modities. The sugar factory increased its prices a couple of times at the rate of 50 cents per ton. Then came the European war of 1914, Germany, Russia and France, all of them normally big exporters of sugar, especially Germany and Russia, were cut off from the world’s trade. Sugar went up like a skyrocket. Labor and other commodities also went up, not quite so fast as sugar, but enough to make the beet growers feel the differ-’ ence. WAR SENDS PRICE OF SUGAR KITING It was known that the sugar trust was making millions. The beet grow- ers thought it was only fair that they should have some of the extra profits. This is the way they figured it out: “The sugar company has an invest- ment of $1,600,000 here. We have 20,- 000 acres, worth $125 an acre, devoted to raising sugar beets and with stock and machinery our total investment devoted to beet growing is probably $3,250,000. ..“The sugar company keeps about 100 men all the year. around at the factory and about 700 during:the 100- day: operating season. We thave at. - least .500 men necessary .all the year around on the 20,000. acres-devoted to sugar beets,’ and the contract labor means at least 2000 .extra A workers :spring and fall. (An able bodied man :can: do the hand work:on about 10 acres.) ' “The factory working time is only «about 100 days. Our growing season is 130 days and we have to do work :in advance of the growing season and after it is over.” - It is an undeniable fact .that the in- vestment of the farmer is more than twice the investment in the factory, his payroll is twice as great and his working season longer. But for one ton of sugar beets the grower at present prices gets $6.50. From this ton the sugar company gets 204 pounds of sugar worth $18.36 and enough pulp and syrup to bring the total value to. more than $20! The farmers organized a Sugar Beet Growers association and outlined a plan by which they would be ‘given a sliding scale for their beets based on _ the price of sugar. Sugar was selling around 6 cents a pound, and growers were to get $5.50 or $6 per ton for their beets. They said to themselves: FARMERS COUNTED ON FAIR TREATMENT “Surely, if the sugar company could afford to pay $5 a ton for beets when sugar was only 314 cents a pound, they can afford to pay more than $6 when sugar is six cents a pound, and more yet if sugar goes still higher. Then, if prices for sugar should drop, the company would not have to pay so much for beets.” Sugar beet growers of-the United States have been supplying pretty much of the entire world with sugar at topnotch prices since the war began. One would think that the beet growers ought But because the sugar manufacturers are able to fix the prices both of the beets when they buy them from the farmer, and of the sugar when they sell it to the con- sumer, there are actually less beets being grown in Montana today for two factories than there were last year for one factory. The plan looked reasonable to the farmers and their association sent a committee to Denver to take it up with the Great Western company. But for some reason the sugar company didn’t take kindly to the idea. Probably they looked ahead and saw that the war was bound to last for years, that they would be able to keep advancing the price of sugar by big jumps, and didn’t want to take the farmer along over the jumps with them. At any rate, they turned the plan down. Instead of adopting a plan that would give the farmer a fair share in the profits of the business, they gave him a 50-cent raise in the price of beets. Instead of giving the growers a ers. They are gradually dropping out around Billings, planting more and more land to grain and less and less to beets. They haven't gone on a strike; they haven't told the govern- ment that they want to be paid for their patriotism, as certain manu- facturers of war munitions have, but they can’'t get up much enthusiasm about growing a crop that pays them a bare living, when they see the sugar manufacturers turning their product over inside of a few days, at three times the price received by the farmer. Now that the United States govern- ment has commenced to fix prices for farm products, the experience of the sugar beet growers ought to be borne A typical beet field near Billings and one of the big beets grown on irrigated land. partnership, which they had asked and deserved, they tried to make it all right by giving them a stick of candy apiece. But there is an old adage that says that while you may lead a horse to water, you can’t make him drink. The sugar company used to pay $5 a ton for beets when sugar was only 3% cents a pound. Now it is paying $6.50, an increase of only 30 per cent, while the price of beet sugar has increased more than 200 per cent. INJUSTICE DISCOURAGES THE BEET GROWERS The injustice is so plain that it is becoming too much for the beet grow-' Great Western Sugar company factory at Biilings, Mont. This factory has been in operation a dozen years. The corral in the foreground is used by sheep which the company purchases cheap in the fall, feeds during the winter on beet pulp and syrup, and sells at a fancy profit in the spring. in mind. They are in need of a fair deal. It ought to be remembered that even if the grower is given a guaranteed price that will in- sure him a bare living, it isn’t human nature to make extraordinary efforts to increase acreage to get just enough to keep in the business. It is human nature for a farmer or anyone else to try to make his situation just a little bit better for next year than it was for last .year. As a matter of fact, a price guar- antee, in itself, means nothing. It it the PRICE that counts, and when the farmer sees that the price is such that he. is making a bare . living, while the man who is hand- ling his products, with less invest- ment, less cost of operation and less labor, is making millions, the farmer can’t be blamed if he is lacking in enthusiasm over the sys- tem. There is one other point in regard to the sugar beet beet situation that is worth noticing. I spoke about the field work being done largely by foreign labor under contract. One able bodied 'man can do about 10 acres of hand- work by working early and late. WOMEN AND BABIES LABOR IN FIELDS But the work isn’t all done by men. It is largely done by the Russian-Ger- ' mans, whole families of them, who move on the fields in the spring, live in tents, eat the simplest fare, work from the earliest morning light to dark and sometimes afterward with ‘the aid of a lantern. It is not only the men and women who work early and late but the little children too. Little tots, barely able to toddle around, older youngsters who ought to be in school, are out in ‘the beet fields, doing the hardest kind of manual labor. In the course of years these families have (Continued on page 22)

Other pages from this issue: