>From Answers.com - Sugar Industry History in the US One reason that the beet sugar industry was established so slowly in the United States is the large amount of hand labor required in growing beets; because of where beets grew, their growers could not rely on enslaved labor. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the cultivation of sugar beets spread throughout the central and western states from the Great Lakes to California, and in both cane and beet processing, large expensive central mills came to dominate the manufacture of sugar. Four small beet sugar factories were constructed between 1838 and 1856, but all failed. The first successful one was established by E. H. Dyer at Alvarado, California (twentytwo miles east of San Francisco), in 1870 and operated through 1967. The next successful plants were established in Watsonville, California (1888); Grand Island, Nebraska (1890); and Lehi, Utah (1891). By 1910 more beet than cane sugar was produced in the continental United States. In 1920 the output exceeded one million tons, and in 1972 it was about 3.5 million tons, which was more than one-fourth of the sugar consumed in the United States. In the 1970s, some sixty plants were producing beet sugar in eighteen states, with more than one-third of the total factory capacity located in California and Colorado. During the 1930s, studies began on the mechanization of growing and harvesting beets. Since World War II, mechanical devices have replaced much of the handcutting of cane, as machines for planting, cultivating, and harvesting beets-all requiring specialized technological changes-were developed by the beginning of World War II, and their adoption was hastened by shortages of hand labor during the war and by postwar prosperity.