CHAPTER V. 



NEW INTERESTS. 



ONE of the most interesting features of agricultural de- 

 velopment in this country has been that which has 

 followed the introduction of new interests. The sugar-beet 

 industry, the growing of alfalfa, the keeping of angora goats, 

 the raising of millo maize these are a few of the features 

 of farm life which have only recently assumed commercial 

 importance and are still capable of enormous expansion. 



The growing of rice has been practiced along the South- 

 ern seaboard since early colonial times ; but less than ten 

 velars ago, by the occupation of new lands, the introduction 

 of new varieties and the application of new methods, this 

 industry presented a turn of opportunity the like of which 

 has hardly been surpassed at any time throughout the history 

 of American agriculture. The methods of banking in and 

 flooding the rice patches and the manner of cultivating and 

 harvesting the grain were scarcely different from those prac- 

 ticed in China and Japan during the past thousand years. 

 Though the negro labor employed by our Southern planters 

 was cheap, the coolie labor of the Orientalist was cheaper, 

 and so American growers were constantly and hopelessly 

 beaten in competition with the Eastern supply. Add to this 

 that in our mechanical threshing and other manipulation of 

 the cereal, the grains were invariably so badly broken as 

 greatly to reduce the market demand for the home-grown 

 article, and there was nearly a free field for the foreign 

 product. 



