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Show EXPENSIVE LESSON SINCE we Americans have made It our business to consume about 4,500,000 tons of sugar per annum, we should make it the nation's business busi-ness to produce most, if not all, ot the sugar we consume. What continental con-tinental Europe did continental America Am-erica should do. Little more than 75 years ago the total world's production produc-tion of sugar was about 1,150,000 tons, 50,000 of which was produced from beets. When the present war began be-gan the world's production of sugar was about 18,000,000 tons approximately approx-imately 9,000,000 of which (except 760,000 tons produced from beets grown on American soil) was produced pro-duced from sugar beets raised in Europe and Russia. Here is a wonderful won-derful picture of the old world's progress industrially and agriculturally agricul-turally in contrast with that of the new world in this particular important import-ant commodity. If during the last twenty-five or thirty years the United States had developed her own beet sugar industry indus-try as it should have done, and England Eng-land had protected her cane sugar producing colonies, Germany could not have caused all the present trouble, trou-ble, so far as sugar is concerned. The lesson has been very expensive. Most important lessons are. It would seem that when every American is individually conscious of the foregoing facts, the beet acreage acre-age in this country, at least during the war, would be increased to sup-1 ply the beet tonnage equal to the ex- j isting factory capacity of converting them into sugar. |