Jim Norris mericans have a sweet tooth; they consume 158 demand for sugar. After World War I most northern A pounds of caloric sweeteners, mostly sucrose, each beet-growing areas relied on workers from Mexico. year. Sucrose comes primarily from sugar cane, a tall Mechanization was removing many permanent workers tropical grass, and from sugar beets, a temperate-zone from fields but increasing the need for seasonal hires. root crop. Historically, sugar production required back - Meanwhile, rising factory wages were luring European breaking, exhausting fieldwork. 1 immigrants out of the beet fields. 2 Sugar beets were once one of the Midwest’s most For many Mexicans, sugar beets represented their best labor-intensive crops. Each year thousands of seasonal economic hope. Mexico still suffered from the devastation workers toiled for low wages to meet the growing of the 1910 revolution, and although pay for beet work 196 was low, labor contracts allowed entire families to work terbelts around farms. To the human eye, the landscape together. This resulted in an acceptable, if very low, ag - appears virtually level and uninterrupted. gregate family income. In turn, growers welcomed the Sugar-beet production in the Valley began shortly control they gained by employing families, which were after World War I. The University of Minnesota’s North - less mobile than single workers. By the end of the 1920s, west Agricultural Experiment Station in Polk County had betabeleros (Mexican and Mexican American sugar-beet conducted field tests with beets during the war. The re - workers) made up 90 percent of the Midwest’s field labor - sults attracted interest from the Minnesota Sugar Com - ers in some areas. Over the next decades the power bal - pany (formerly the Carver County Sugar Company), ance between beet producers and as many as 26,000 which had operated a sugar-beet processing plant at migrant workers who traveled to the Red River Valley Chaska since 1910. After contracting with some Valley fluctuated with national events and advances in beet- farmers to grow beets, Minnesota Sugar announced plans growing technology. Dependent upon each other in a in 1924 to construct a processing plant in East Grand sometimes paternal relationship, neither workers, farm - Forks. At this time the Denver-based American Beet ers, nor the American Crystal Sugar Company perma - Sugar Company bought Minnesota Sugar and its inter - nently held all the advantages. ests in the Valley, as well as several other midwestern companies. Construction continued, and the processing traddling the Minnesota-North Dakota border, the plant became operational for the 1926 harvest. About S Red River Valley was formed when Glacial Lake 42,000 tons of sugar beets from 4,600 acres were Agassiz deposited a 20-to-30-foot silt bed from what is now the Canadian border to the North Dakota-South Jim Norris is an associate professor of history at North Dakota Dakota state line. Tapering from 80 miles wide in the State University, Fargo. He is working on a book about migrant north to 20 miles wide in the south, the Valley is bisected workers and sugar-beet producers in the Red River Valley by the north-flowing Red River. Few trees exist except through the 1970s. along the river or where they have been planted as shel - Migrant workers topping beets in G. W. Johnson’s Renville County field near Hector, late 1920s Winter 2002–03 197 A Short History of Sugar ugar, in the form of sucrose, is extraction factory began operating in S found in all green plants. Although Prussia in 1802, and Napoleon Bona - it is not essential to life, no civiliza - parte encouraged French production. tion has been known to disavow the German immigrants brought sugar taste of sweetness. beets to the United States in the early Sugar cane, a member of the nineteenth century, but serious produc - grass family, was first cultivated about tion began only after 1870, primarily in 8,000 B.C. in New Guinea. One variety California, Colorado, and Nebraska. It made its way to India by 400 B.C. and expanded just before World War I into then to the Arab world. Arabs intro - other midwestern states. Today, sugar duced sugar to the privileged classes beets are grown in 16 states between in Europe in the eighth century A.D. the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean. Sugar only became widely accessi - During the nineteenth and early ble in Europe after Columbus brought twentieth centuries, rural Minneso - cane to the New World. By the end of tans also sweetened their food with the seventeenth century, Brazil and molasses made from sorghum cane. the Caribbean region had become Migrant worker using short-handled hoe Most neighborhoods had at least one centers of production. England’s per farmer with a mill who crushed the capita ingestion of sugar rose dra- Spanish-American War, Americans stalks and boiled the juice down into matically from four pounds in 1700 doubled their consumption. sweet syrup. to 90 pounds in 1900. Sugar beets, the other primary In the United States, sugar cane source of sucrose, had long been Sources: R. H. Cottrell, ed., Beet-Sugar was grown in Louisiana and Florida, grown in Europe to feed livestock. In Economics (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1952); Mintz, Sweetness and Powe r; Shop - and citizens consumed less than 40 the 1700s German chemists learned taugh, Roots of Success ; D. Jerome Tweton, pounds per year in 1880. After U.S. to extract high-quality sugar from “The Business of Agriculture,” in Minnesota corporations expanded into Hawaii and certain varieties of beets, an impor - in a Century of Change, ed. Clifford E. Clark Jr. Cuba and the United States acquired tant discovery for countries lacking (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1989), 287–89. Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the tropical colonies. The first sugar-beet processed that first year. By 1929, production had workers for these two brief periods each year presented more than doubled to almost 94,000 tons produced an immense challenge for growers. 4 on more than 15,000 acres. 3 While most beet-growing regions in the 1920s over - The Valley’s climate represented a special chal- whelmingly employed Mexican laborers, the Red River lenge for sugar-beet production. In areas such as Cali - Valley did not. Sugar beets did not become the dominant fornia, growers could stagger plantings and keep regional commodity overnight, and most farmers still grew workers occupied for seven months of the year. Red other crops. Furthermore, Valley growers could do beet River Valley growers tried this but found yields unsat - fieldwork without seasonal help if their operation was 20 isfactory; by 1930, they limited themselves to a single acres or less, and during the late 1920s the average beet planting. Therefore, Valley fieldwork requirements contract ranged from about 16 acres to 28 acres. For were high in May and June, when workers “blocked,” example, John Fiandaca, whose family worked a small, thinned, and weeded the fields, most often on their 12-acre farm near Dilworth, recalled that he and his knees with short-handled hoes. Little additional labor brothers did all their own fieldwork. American Beet Suga r was necessary until late September when they pulled, Company experimented with “gangs” of local boys and topped, and piled the beets. Insuring a ready supply of girls, more than 700 in 1930, for example. In addition, 198 Minnesota History for several years the company transported German Rus - sians from its operations in Nebraska to help out in the Valley. Some years, Filipinos were brought by train from the West Coast, but the growers found many “had a ten - dency to drift.” A 1931 American Beet Sugar Company document described the Valley’s sugar-beet work force as 60 percent “local white,” 35 percent Mexican, and 5 percent “drift-in whites. ”5 he onset of the Great Depression hurt sugar-beet T production in the Valley. The rate paid to growers dropped from about $7.00 per ton in 1930 to about $5.15 per ton in 1932; total acreage fell 10 percent. But produc - ers then became recipients of New Deal benefits. In 1934 the Jones-Costigan Act (an amendment to the Agricul - tural Adjustment Act) provided government-subsidized Window display featuring East Grand Forks processing support payments to growers, and the Sugar Act of 1937 plant’s first bag of sugar and small souvenir bags handed virtually institutionalized federal aid. Factoring in govern - out at 1926 opening celebration and dance ment support, farmers in the Valley through 1940 aver - aged about $6.80 per ton, very close to the 1930 record Grand Forks district, reported that he intended to use harvest. By 1940 more than 26,000 acres produced more mostly local white laborers in 1933; that year, whites did than 236,000 tons of sugar, about twice the amount pro - fully 80 percent of the work. Numbers of migrant labor - duced a decade earlier. 6 ers began to rebound significantly in 1935, however, and Political events in the 1930s also brought changes to by 1940 almost three-fourths of Valley sugar-beet labor - America’s labor pool. A nationwide movement to repatri - ers were Mexican American. The Jones-Costigan and ate Mexican immigrants (and Mexican Americans) re - Sugar Acts also standardized sugar-beet wages; while turned perhaps one million people to Mexico, and in the still low, wages rose more than 10 percent between 1936 Valley pressures emerged to employ resident whites only. and 1938. 7 J. B. Bingham, manager of American Beet Sugar’s East n the later 1930s, as Valley whites secured better em - Growers often worked their own beets I ployment or entered New Deal programs, growers on family plots less than 20 acres in size.