HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE SUGAR-BEET INDUSTRY IN 
THE UNITED STATES? - 
EARLY HISTORY OF SUGAR INDUSTRY 
Sugar did not become an important item of diet until modern 
times. Formerly it was used only as a medicine and was sold in small 
quantities by apothecaries. In ancient times honey was the principal 
sweet food, and early Greek and Roman writers mention sugar as a 
rare product and refer to it as the ‘honey which comes from bam- 
boos.” Sugar cane became an important commercial source of sugar 
several centuries before the discovery of sugar in beets. Early in the 
sixteenth century sugar cane was introduced into the West Indies 
and into Central and South America from Mediterranean countries. 
The first cane-sugar mill was erected in Cuba in 1547. With 
increased production in. the American colonies, sugar came into 
more general use in Europe. The price in London, which had been 
as high as $275 per hundred pounds as late as 1482, had by the close 
of the fifteenth century fallen to $53. For many years it remained 
a luxury, and not until after the middle of the seventeenth century 
did it really become a part of the diet of European peoples. 
In 1747 sugar was for the first time obtained from beets by Andrew 
Marggraf, a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Under the 
encouragement of Frederick the Great, of Prussia, and Frederick 
William III, the first commercial extraction of sugar from beets was 
developed by Carl Franz Achard. In 1799-1801, the first beet-sugar 
factory in the world was built near Steinan in Silesia, Germany. The 
development of factory methods from laboratory practice was a slow 
and tedious process and even after the erection of the first factory the 
difficulty of purifying sugar and the low sugar content of the beets 
were factors that discouraged the enterprise. 
However, the growth of the industry in Europe was greatly stimu- 
lated by the blockades established during the Napoleonic wars. As 
a result of embargoes the average price of sugar on the Continent from 
1807 to 1815 was 30 cents per pound. Napoleon strove to supply the 
shortage by encouraging the growing of sugar ‘beets, the build- 
ing of sugar factories, and the study of the technical problems of 
sugar-beet growing and sugar manufacture. His policy was so 
successful that, by 1812, 40 factories were in operation in France. 
This period really marked the beginning of the modern commercial 
sugar-beet industry. Later development in Europe was somewhat 
spasmodic, being affected by the competition of cane sugar, by the 
irregular progress of the science of growing and manufacture, and by 
adverse legislation. 
The most rapid progress was made in Germany. There agricultural 
conditions were favorable to the industry, the sugar content of beets 
was increased by means of seed selection, and advances were made 
» For a history of the sugar-beet industry see Harris, F. S., The Sugar Beet in America, 1919.