RIBBON 



5005 



RICE 



Like bits of the sky fallen through me on high 

 Are paved with the moon and with these. 



Consult Lanier's Science of English Verse; 

 Matthews* Study of Versification. 



RIBBON, rib'un, a narrow, woven cloth of 

 any width up to nine inches. The distinguish- 

 ing feature of a ribbon is really a technical part 

 of the manufacturing process: on an ordinary 

 loom only one width of cloth is woven at a 

 time, whereas on a ribbon loom at least two 

 widths are woven side by side. On some mod- 

 ern looms as many as forty different ribbons 

 can be woven at the same time. The buyer 

 or user has no way of knowing how many 

 widths were woven on a single loom at one 

 time, and any woven fabric not more than nine 

 inches wide is now called a ribbon. Practically 

 all ribbon is made of silk or a silken mixture. 

 It is used for binding and tying, in women's and 

 children's dress, in wrapping packages, for fes- 

 toons and decorations, and for a thousand other 

 purposes. 



The manufacture of ribbon is a distinct 

 branch of the textile industry. Hand looms on 

 which several narrow "webs" could be woven 

 at one time were in use at Danzig as early 

 as 1600, and at Leyden a few years later. Rib- 

 bons are known to have been woven by hand in 

 the eleventh century near Saint Etienne, 

 France, which is to this day a center of ribbon 

 making. Basel in Switzerland, Crefeld in Ger- 

 many, and Coventry in England are great 

 manufacturers of ribbon. In the United States 

 the annual production exceeds $30,000,000, more 

 than seventy-five per cent of the total being 

 made in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 



RIBOT, re bo', ALEXANDRE FELIX JOSEPH 

 (1842- ), a French statesman, born at Saint 

 Omer and educated at the Lycee in that city, 

 and in Paris. Admitted to the bar, he ac- 

 quired a large practice, and in 1878 was elected 

 to the Chamber of Deputies. In the Cabinet 

 of Freycinet (1890-1893) and Loubet he was 

 Foreign Minister, and in 1892-1893 he was presi- 

 dent of the Cabinet. The investigation of the 

 Panama Canal scandals took place while he 

 was in that position. In 1893 he again became 

 premier, but his ministry was short-lived. Ri- 

 bot was 'generally conservative in his views, 

 especially on questions of colonial policy. 



RICARDO, riknl-r'doh, DAVID (1772-1823), a 

 British economist, born in London. His father, 

 was a Dutch Jew, had him educated in 

 lind and gave him a place at the age of 

 fourteen in his office in the London Stock Ex- 

 change. At nineteen he turned from the Jewish 



religion, joined the Church of England and 

 married a Gentile. His father renounced him 

 and threw him upon his own resources, but 

 Ricardo was so shrewd in business that he made 

 a fortune before his twenty-fifth birthday. 

 After that year he devoted more and more of 

 his time to the study of political economy and 

 in 1809 wrote his first treatise on the subject, 

 a discussion of the money question. 



In 1817 he completed Principles oj Political 

 Economy and Taxation, a book that for more 

 than half a century profoundly influenced all 

 thinkers and writers in the field of economics. 

 Among his theories the following are most im- 

 portant: that increase of wages does not raise 

 prices; that profits can be realized only by a 

 fall in wages; that profits are determined by 

 the cost of the necessary food which is pro- 

 duced at the greatest expense, and that wages 

 cannot in the long run exceed the least amount 

 necessary for the well-being of the laborer. 

 This last statement is often called the "iron law 

 of wages." 



RICE. Although many of the great world- 

 foods belong to the family of grasses, there is 

 no more important member of that family than 

 the extensively cultivated grass we know as 

 rice. Half the population of the entire earth 

 finds the greater part of its food in the seed 

 of the rice plant. The popularity of the grain 

 is far greater, however, in Oriental lands than 

 in the countries of the western hemisphere. 

 Japan, Indeed, is sometimes called the "Land 

 of Rice-Ears," and it is as natural to associate 

 the thought of rice and chopsticks with China- 

 men as to connect the idea of spaghetti and 

 macaroni with Italians: Rice is more to Asia 

 than com and wheat are to North America. 



An Ancient Grain and a Far Traveler. The 

 ancestor of the rice we eat to-day was a wild 

 grass fringing the lakes of India and Northern 

 Australia, called by the Hindus nivara. The 

 Latin name is oryza, from which our word is 

 derived. How many centuries ago man first 

 began to cultivate this prolific grass no one 

 knows. Many Hindu rites still performed with 

 rice grains are so ancient that their original 

 significance is now entirely forgotten. 



The antiquity of rice culture in China is indi- 

 cated by a ceremony dating back three thou- 

 sand years before Christ, in which emperor and 

 princes honor- < planting by sowing a 



handful of seed with their own royal hands. In 

 Italy rice was not cultivated until about 

 ity-five years before the discovery of the 

 New World. 



