THE IRRIGA II ON A GE. 253 



vesting time. The harvest season does not differ from the harvesting 

 of wheat or oats in the northern states. After cutting, the rice is 

 allowed to stand in a shock from two to three weeks before stacking, 

 as, owing to the excessive amount of moisture in the straw, it takes 

 longer to dry out than other grain. The crop is harvested at the 

 same expense and in the same manner with self-binding harvesters as 

 other small grain. The yield is about three times that of wheat. 

 Under favorable conditions it produces from twelve to eighteen bar- 

 rels per acre, the average price for the last ten years being $2 a bar- 

 rel. Rice growers sell the cereal in the rough to the mills, which 

 take off the hulls and put the polish on the grains. Planting gen- 

 erally begins in March, and it may continue till July, while harvest- 

 ing may begin in August and last until November. American rice 

 machinery enables one American to accomplish about as much as 

 thirty men do in the far East. 



Rice culture in the United States was confined until 1885 to the 

 alluvial lands of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana. Sub- 

 sequently it was found that the so called prairie lands of southwest- 

 ern Louisiana and southern Texas were fully adapted to the growth of 

 rice, and within a short time vast areas of land that had always been, 

 considered worthless were made to yield comfortable incomes. The 

 coast rice belt in Louisiana and Texas includes 12,000 square miles of 

 fertile rice land. In most cases irrigation is employed, as rains are 

 infrequent and the proximity of ten navigable rivers makes the chief 

 problem in rice culture an easy one. Canals are run from the rivers 

 to the farms, while in addition the farmers receive the benefit of 

 gravel beds underlying the land, from which large supplies of soft 

 water are obtained. The modern rice mill takes the rice in the rough 

 and turns it out ready for market, graded, sacked and weighed, at the 

 rate of 20,000 to 200,000 pounds a day. With this machinery there is 

 no country where a dollar will produce as many bushels of rice as in 

 the United States. It is estimated that Cuba, Porto Rico and the 

 Philippines will all be large importers of rice from the United States, 

 and that even India, China and Japan will some day need American 

 rice to help feed their increased population. In Texas alone $800,000 

 (mostly northern capital) has already been invested in the rice indus- 

 try. According to the statistics compiled by S. F. B. Morse, passen- 

 ger traffic manager of the Southern Pacific, the Southern Pacific road 

 handled out of southwestern Louisiana 2,000,000 pounds of rice in 

 1886, while in less than ten years, in 1892, 100,000,000 pounds of rice 

 were produced. Under present conditions the annual rice production 

 in this country is 200,000,000 pounds, but it is estimated that with the 

 present and prospective market this country will soon be able to sell 

 700,000,000 pounds of rice annually. 



