In 1854 the firm of Peyr, Gerson and Lipmann built a sugar refinery in Šurany, and the whole town rearranged itself around it. Sugar beet has to be processed within days of being lifted, so a refinery pulls the farming, the carting, the railways and the seasonal workforce of an entire district towards itself. For the next century the Šurany year had a fixed shape: sow, hoe, lift — and then the campaign, the weeks each autumn when the factory ran day and night and everyone who could work, worked.Roku 1854 postavila firma Peyr, Gerson a Lipmann v Šuranoch cukrovar a celé mesto sa okolo neho preskupilo. Cukrová repa sa musí spracovať pár dní po vybratí zo zeme, a tak si cukrovar pritiahne poľnohospodárstvo, povozníctvo, železnice aj sezónnych robotníkov z celého okolia. Šuriansky rok mal na ďalšie storočie pevný tvar: siatie, okopávanie, zber — a potom kampaň, tie jesenné týždne, keď fabrika bežala vo dne v noci a robil každý, kto vládal.
