One trouble with fruit trees under irrigation is that if given all the water they can use they continue growing until late in the fall without maturing up the season's growth, and the result is the green wood winterkills. This can be overcome by proper attention to the watering.

Sugar Beet Culture

When II. G. Leavitt came into the North Platte valley, one of his prime purposes was the establishment of sugar beet culture. This included Morrill county territory 1 then a part of Cheyenne county) in the tests. Sugar beets were raised and shipped to Ames, where the factory was located. The price then paid was five dollars per ton.

This demonstration, while proving the tonnage and sugar content tc the extent that we now have factories here, met with disas-

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

ter ; the Ames factory went broke, and the farmers realized but a small amount of the money. From that beginning- the largest single industry in the North Platte valley exists.

The Great Western Sugar Company has four factories in operation in the valley, one of which cost approximately two million dollars is within Morrill county at the city of Bayard. This is one of the newest type and strictly up-to-date mills. It turns out annually almost enough sugar to feed the entire state of Nebraska. In round numbers, the county produced a quarter of a million tons of beets in 1920, for which the farmer received three million dollars, and from which the factory made about eight hundred thousand bags of refined sugar, or something like sixty-five pounds for every man. woman and child in the state. The pre-war consumption of sugar was an average of eighty pounds, but it has fallen below that since the habit of curtailing the appetite for sweets was enforced by war.