COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE AND PROTECTION 183 
history and outcome of the endeavors to promote by protective 
duties the beet sugar industry. 
The beet sugar industry of the United States, as it now (1925) 
stands, is in the main massed in the far west — California, Utah, 
Colorado, and the adjacent region. The agricultural belt of the 
central states has a very slender share. Only one state in this 
part of the country, Michigan, makes a considerable contribution 
to the supply. Barring Michigan, the production of beet sugar 
may be said to be confined to the Rocky Mountain and Pacific 
states. 
The explanation of this geographical concentration does not 
lie in any obstacles from climate or soil in other parts of the coun- 
try. The beet flourishes over a very wide area. An instructive 
pamphlet issued by the Department of Agriculture shows the zone 
in which the sugar-beet may be expected to “attain its highest 
perfection.” This zone or belt, two hundred miles wide, starts at 
the Hudson, sweeps across the country, and includes a great part 
of the north central region. Yet in the last mentioned, the most 
important and productive agricultural region of the country, 
there is virtually no beet growing or sugar making, except, as just 
mentioned, in Michigan. And the fundamental reason for the 
absence of beet growing and hence of sugar-beet production in this 
region is to be found in the fact that agriculture is applied with 
greater effectiveness in other directions. It is not that the climate 
or soil or even the men make it more difficult to grow beets here 
than in Europe. It is simply that other ways of using the land 
are found more advantageous. The case is a representative one, 
and it will be worth while to consider it in some detail. 
An excellent investigator on the agricultural aspects of the beet 
sugar industry has said : “The growing of beets is not agriculture, 
but horticulture.” All the manuals and pamphlets insist on the 
need of elaborate preparation, minute care, much labor directly 
in the fields. The planting of the seed does indeed take place by 
drills, the plants coming up in continuous rows. But after this 
! Professor G. W. Shaw, of the University of California; see the pamphlet on 
Sugar Beets in the San Joaquin Valley. The passages quoted in the text are partly 
from Professor Shaw's pamphlet, partly from other sources.