APRIL 1897 –
Ralph Edward Bicknell writes a short description of Los Alamitos in its earliest stages. Bicknell was young but prolific writer who died in 1904, his 23rd year. Born in 1881, he was diagnosed with consumption in 1896 and upon doctor’s recommendations, the family relocated to Southern California. In April 1897, his parents took him on a 50-day trip around the So Cal countryside and Ralph recorded what he saw, sending articles back to the Pasadena Star-News. After his death Other notes and reflections were published and circulated privately by his parents as “Ralph’s Scrap Book.” Included on page 229 are his reflections on the growing town of Los Alamitos.
SUGAR CANE COMPETITION
It was during the first year of Ralph’s sick-ness, while in California in our extensive travels about the state over land by train and on horse back, that we visited the two large beet sugar plants illustrated and described in this article. He took notes of what he saw and such information as he was able to procure on the spot. Later he secured the illustrations and other information from a reliable source. By a careful study of the illustrations and the accompanying descriptive matter, the reader who may take any interest in the manufacture of beet sugar, cannot fail to gain reliable information thereby. This article was written in his seventeenth year.
THE BEET SUGAR INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA
Beet sugar producing in California and the West is a firmly established American industry. With no political aspersion, it is emphatically not an idle dream of those protectionists whose ” swaddling clothes ” idea confirms illustration in tin plate manufactures. In the commercial inventory of California and Nebraska beet sugar is an important item. [231]
It is but a few years since Uncle Sam began to think seriously of making beet sugar for himself, but the climate in which his experiment took root proved admirably adapted to the culture of suitable beets. American push and perse- verance have clone the rest. From a single factory at Lehi, Utah, the industry has grown to be the supporter of thou- sands of American citizens. Louisiana, with her vast fields of cane, may no longer boast of being the only sugar bowl on the map.
Already Uncle Samuel is making big use of Calfornia’s rich beet lands for the satisfying of his sweet tooth. With the perfecting of the product, Louisiana may well look to the far West for a dangerous competitor. Until the appearance of American rivalry, Germany mon- opolized the business of making a substitute for cane sugar. As its offspring is still in his childhood, the Fatherland still does a large share of it. The youngster, though, is almost ready for long trousers, and with the ample protection that Mr. Dingley has given him, he should soon be able to cause his German parent to take a rear seat. Germans, of course, are still principal experts and pro- moters of the scheme. The Yankees of the West, however, are not slow to perceive that beet sugar production has a great future. Gradually they have been initiated into the intricacies of the process — learned secrets that refused to be hid behind a long pipe and a beer stein. Before many decades we may hope to see the beet sugar industry not alone operated on American soil, but run entirely by Ameri- can labor and American brains. Beet sugar, as a sugar, has not, to tell the truth, yet at- tained the success of the product of Germany — which is 232 not due to the fact that the beets grown in this country are not as good as Germany’s, for they are better, but present imperfections in the American process. The consumers of beet sugar are largely the farmers of the Middle West. Beet sugar is not yet considered quite as good as that from cane, and we fastidious people of New England would find fault if our sweetener wasn’t up to the scratch. Dakota tillers of the soil, who have to deal with cyclones, blizzards, floods and droughts can’t afford to bother much about such an insignificant article of diet. But beet sugar’s commercial value is bound to increase with the added ex- perience of its manufacturers. In the not far distant future, a near relation of the vegetable that we slice up for our dinner will furnish us with sugar for our tea. Genial “old Sol” with his warm penetrating rays, is re- sponsible for sweet beets, and sweet beets make sweet sugar. It is for this reason that in Southern California — the “Land of Sunshine” — we have the greatest beet sugar region on earth. It is a very simple deduction, for it is in- disputable that the sun shines more in ” American Italy ” than it does in Nebraska, in Germany, or almost anywhere else.
The largest beet sugar factory in California — the largest in the world — is at the little town of Chino, about forty miles southeast of Los Angeles.
The town of Chino is a corner of Richard Girds’ great ranch of 50,000 acres. California farms are on a different scale from those of Massachusetts. He himself laid out the town, runs his own railroad connecting it with one of the transcontinental Hues, gave the sugar company land for their buildings, put considerable cash into the scheme himself, and was, until he lost everything a few years ago, leading man generally thereabouts.
The Chino factory cost over a million dollars. The mill is run by twelve boilers, of a total power of 2500 horses, and when in full operation — from July first till late Autumn — requires 300 employees. The establishment has the yearly capacity of transforming 62,851 tons of beets into savory sugar. The several buildings of the plant seem one solid mass of complicated mechanism, and a greenhorn wonders how the sweet stuff ever gets through without getting lost.
For five or more miles outside of Chino the moist land is so rankly rich that it exhales an odor resembling that of a full-fledged city dump. Weeds grow to be almost trees, and it is dangerous to leave your cane sticking in the ground — ’twill sprout.
However, were the writer an agriculturist, he would prefer a little inferior grade of soil, minus the perfume. In the vicinity of this gigantic sweetening concern 7000 acres of beets — not ordinary beets ; sugar beets are white — were set out last spring and bought by the company.
With the factory as a never failing market, beets are a very profitable crop for Chino ranchmen.
One of the several new California beet sugar factories is at Los Alamitos, not far from the town of Santa Anna. It is now in full operation, but when the writer was there the factory was still building, and the new born city that the concern had, magnet like, drawn around itself, was but a [235] few months old.
The Los Alamitos factory, in its completion, is probably the finest equipped plant in this country. Its machinery, of the latest pattern, overcomes many of the troubles incident to earlier efforts. It was a typical sample of those pyrotechnical Western settlements that yesterday were a wilderness and today are thriving towns — one of those places where everything is put together with shingle nails and mucilage and solidity is as yet unknown. Cheap frame houses were daily being erected ; divers business enterprises were fast making their appearance ; cloth tents, — temporary dwellings of prospective citizens — were growing up like toad stools, in a night.
Los Alamitos gave every evidence of a genuine boom — one of the old school, after the pattern of the Southern Cali fornia variety of ten years ago.
On the outskirts of the coming metropolis we encountered some new arrivals who had journeyed 400 miles, gypsy fashion, from the northern part of the State. They were halted in an open lot, discussing as to the best course to pursue, for they had reached the place only an hour before. A happy-go-lucky set, whose home was anywhere — good hearts, though, under the rough exterior.
Paterfamilias, a man by the name of Morgan Pratt, had brought with him his entire family of a dozen or so, and in their ” prairie schooner ” and a couple of other wagons were their worldly effects entire, from stove funnel to a bird cage of dubious practicability. This style of traveling is a favorite one in California, where no more storm is to be feared under the open sky than under twelve inches of the best pine boards. 236 Theirs was the same trouble as many others — they had been unable to find work and were in search of some. The mother of the family said they had been on the move most of the time for twenty-one years. Twenty-one years ! She was tired, she said, of her roving life. She wanted to settle down and have a home. She was going to have a home, and her husband and sons were to have employment, and they were to be happy. The long-sought job had come. Perhaps an extreme case, but there are many such in the great West. Claus Spreckles may make his millions out of the beet sugar business — his may be an unjust share — but Spreckles is not the only man benefited. Does Morgan Pratt care what Spreckles’ fortunes are? Pratt is earning an honest living and a happy home. The beet sugar business is the means of his earning it.